Download Free Repeat Patterns

Another pattern Site.. Very nice too

(tags: design resources textures webdesign)

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My earliest Irish encounter was “An Irish Airman Forsees His Death” by W B Yeats, and the swashbuckling adventure Moby Dick by Herman Melville.  Ever since I have held a rosy view of Ireland.  Then the 80s brought to light the Irish independence struggle. My viewpoint changed a little.  My next interaction of Ireland was through my friend David Airey. I had a viewpoint shift.  But through the works of Roddy Doyle, I have had a whole new understanding of Ireland, and its emerging culture.

In the book, The Deportees and Other Stories, Doyle leads us through a journey of stories laced with  ‘Spuds’, reactions to ‘Riverdance’ and ‘Danny Boy’ and are interspersed with flavors of modern day Ireland.  In his collection of short stories, Doyle has caught the little nuances that transports the reader to everyday Ireland.  The thing that strikes us the most is that the characters in the story could be anywhere.  The very sense of familiarity helps the reader identify with the characters in each story.  The topic of  of racial bigotry, has been handled in a sensitive, quirky humorous fashion, and displays superbly, Doyles sensitivity and understanding of human nature.

Without acting as a spoiler alert, some excerpts:
Guess who is coming for dinner:
It had been a week of politeness, smiles and heavy silences. He could hear cutlery on the plates for the first time in years. He tortured himself for things to say, nice things that would prove he wasn’t a bigot.

The Deportees
He typed one handed into his laptop. ‘Brothers and Sisters, Welcome to Ireland.  Do you want the Celtic Tiger to dance to your music?  If yes, the World’s Hardest-working Band is looking for you.  Contact J. Rabbitte at 089-22524242 or rabbittej@banjo.ie.  White Irish need not apply.’

Altogether a must read book!

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She is frequently called Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; Daw is not part of her name, but an honorific similar to madam for older, revered women, literally meaning “aunt”.[7] Strictly speaking, her given name is equivalent to her full name, but it is acceptable to refer to her as “Ms. Suu Kyi” or Dr. Suu Kyi, since those syllables serve to distinguish her from her father, General Aung San, who is considered to be the father of modern-day Burma.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The decision of the Nobel Committee mentions:[73]
“ The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (Burma) for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.

…Suu Kyi’s struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression…

…In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.
”

— Oslo, 14 October 1991

Aung San Suu Kyi was given Honorary Canadian citizenship by the Government of Canada in 2007. She is only the fourth person in history to receive this honour.

Courtesy Wikipedia

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I found an interesting sentence generator app at http://sentence.bigparadox.com/. I especially liked their chat application, where you could chat with a bot [robot!]
The work here was commendable, but since the interface was so schoolbookish, i got bored fast, not to mention that I had to scroll horizontally! [I know! What were they thinking? ] This site reminded me of Google, where the back-end was better than the UI.. [Its reverse with a microsoft app!]

Both these apps are part of a field of study in linguistics called machine Translation.

Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT, is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. At its basic level, MT performs simple substitution of words in one natural language for words in another. Using corpus techniques, more complex translations may be attempted, allowing for better handling of differences in linguistic typology, phrase recognition, and translation of idioms, as well as the isolation of anomalies.
source:wikipedia.org

The above examples serve as fun tools but have broader usage. Some good uses would be obviously language translation using software. Yahoo BabelFish anyone? I used this site and find its okay for basic translation but is not a good tool for absolute translation.

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So I promptly read his article and really enjoyed reading it. 

For someone who earns a living through consideration of outbreaks of The Future, it’s all useful information, but that’s all it is. For the parsing and condensation of that information into knowledge, it seems we still need the structure of print publishing, a form that insists on time to think, digest and present. While I will write about things that relate to Wired UK’s fields of interest in the coming months, for this first issue it’s worth standing outside in the cold away from the internet and consider why print and newspaper/magazine structures still exist. Because reporting and editing are honest-to-God actual fucking jobs that don’t get taught at the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, and because all those faceless blog-networks infesting the Bay Area like tongue herpes have no interest in their minimum-wage blogmonkeys thinking about anything bigger than their hitcount.

It did get me thinking, about the wars that are waged between creative types and the bottom line types [money, advts, hits..] They are interdependent.. Without an article written to attract, there would be no hits etc.

Today has been a day of firsts.  First it was Warren’s article, then I discovered Daniel Silva the author.  I am so enjoying reading his book. , “The Secret Servant“. Yes I know its unpolitical and old-fashioned to read a book. I cannot visualize myself using a Kindle in the near future either! Coffee and a book! Thats the life.. 

Have you noticed that anything well done needs time be it a a baby or a house or a book or even an article? While geekdom for the sake of geekiness is fine, what really turns me on is well written prose. 
Without giving away too much, here is an excerpt from the book..

It was a day to engage in what the Dutch so fondly refer to as gezelligheid, the pursuit of small pleasures: an aimless stroll through the flower stalls of the Bloemenmarkt, a lager or two in a good bar in the Rembrandtplein, or for those so inclined, a bit of fine cannabis in the brown coffeehouses of the Haarlemmerstraat.

Both Warren and Daniel, evoke pictures in your head with their prose.  Daniel Silva can be poetic in the midst of a thriller, and Warren can be quirky while stating facts :)  Writing at its bloody best!

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Pic Courtesy: Radiohead at/ease

I was toying with the thought of doing one for chilligavva, but mentally figuring out the steps made me defer the activity to a more leisurely day.

Tonight, I stumbled onto wordle.net and boy was I excited. You can make your own word clouds in various preset shapes and fonts. I was too lazy to even type in a bunch of words, but there was an option wherein I enter my blog feed and voila, in no time, I got a wonderful word cloud.

Here is what I could understand.
Technology: Java Applet
Right Click: More Settings [Context Menu]
Blog Widget: The site offers a code clip that you can paste into your blog.
UI: Intuitive and easy to use
What is bad? No unique picture generated, that I could copy or refer to. (I resorted to a screen capture.)

Here is how it looks.

To conclude, I would suggest Wordle to my friends.  Its fun and very engaging and simple to use. My rating? 7/10

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First came symbols, then came engravings, then the torch and then the flag.

Source:http://www.logodesignworks.com/blog/logo-design-history

As a history buff, I enjoyed reading a very detailed article from logodesignworks.com on how logos developed in our history.

Next I want to bring to attention, a very interesting article on Handwriting based logos from my friend David Airey’s blog, http://Logodesignlove.com.

The following are a couple of logos I liked from logopond.

Some Interesting Logo Sites, Logo Blogs and blogposts for you to explore…
http://www.38one.com/cleverblog
http://www.logodesignlove.com/
http://www.davidairey.com/top-50-graphic-design-blogs/
http://www.logodesignworks.com/blog/
http://logopond.com/

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I have been a regular reader of http://www.deccanchronicle.com/ [DC in short], a hyderabad based english paper for the past 4 years now, as a weak connection to anything hyderabad.  The only reason I used to tolerate reading the online version and badly designed site was that it was the only english newspaper.  Yes we had Telugu papers, but the presentation and technology improved only in recent times. [earlier readers had to look at scanned images folks not the cool present day UTF fonts..] So sometime early Jan 2009, DC got a facelift.  It now emulates certain CMS based news sites, and a vast improvement from the old version. Me being me, I had to look under the hood! I saw the site was composed of a gazillion divs, instead of tables and cells. [Look up the source of timesofindia, and you can see a host of tables over there!] I was impressed.  [W3c standards? Atleast an attempt?  Yes yes yes! Hallelujah!]

Since Dec. 2008, I am a signed up member of the e-paper as Deccan Chronicle calls it. The experience is really really good, and I feel like I am back in Hyderabad, reading the real actual paper.  Wow!

What takes me back memory lane is the movies pages, counterpoint[daily cartoon], sealed tender notices [govt. bid advertisements], obituaries and classifieds!

User Experience:

Navigation

All you need to do is select any of the pages by using the scroll area on the right.
When you mouse over each article, the particular area is color highlighted.

Accessing an article:

When you click on a particular article, you get to see whatever picture and associated text in a pop-up window.  Pretty neat I must say.

All this archiving was possible from some neat archiving software developed by folks called “Pressmart”

And typing the url “http://www.dc-epaper.com/” will take you to the most recent archive or the latest dated paper.  So you are always pointing to the current article!

Features

Headline only view, my clippings, text zoom, read article [aural media], print, email article.  Accessing articles is achieved via a calendar function accessed through an icon..

http://www.dc-epaper.com/DC/DCH/2009/01/29/index.shtml

So a pretty good move on the papers part, recognizing that it has global readers and catering to the same.

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I am writing of this a little late ( some kind of oversight I guess, I apologise Vinh Le ), but in the midst of spring cleaning my site, I now correct the omission. 

Very pleased to note that Vinh Le has awarded me a honorable mention in his post “30 more comment designs for blog designers”.

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This is the third terrorist attack this year in India- Jaipur, Bangalore and now Mumbai. Some people are frightened of democracy and the responsibility one needs to take with freedom. They would much rather live in the dark ages with no other prayer but violence. Its a shame on humankind. The demand of the hour is unity inspite of the collateral damage. I deeply condemn this abhorrent behaviour and wish the world leaders to actually take a stand and move towards global leadership and citizenship and actually come down strongly on the terrorists. After all we do know who they are. Would it be difficult to collectively eliminate these forces once and for all? Are there two ways to this stand?

I especially congratulate the fire brigade, the army, navy and police forces of India. I also am proud of the unspoken Indian heroes who actually helped.

Its pathetic that TV networks are trying to milk soundbytes, for all its worth.

UPDATE: Via http://Eenadu.net, a telugu news site. Some dropped satellite phones gathered from the fishing boats through which the terrorists came in have calls made to Karachi.

via timesofindia
While initial reports from India suggested the Mumbai carnage was a localised attack by militant malcontents in India because of the “Deccan Mujaheddin” decoy that was used to claim responsibility, evidence cited by Indian army and security experts based on phone intercepts, nature of weaponry, mode of entry by sea etc., has quickly focused the attention on Pakistan.

The statement by India’s normally cautious and restrained prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that groups based across the border, a thinly-disguised reference to Pakistan, has also galvanized the strategic and security community into examining Islamabad’s role in the region that has already been subjected to scrutiny in the past.

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This is probably one of the coolest ways to go!  Dr. pepper is paying gamers to do what they love doing the most, keep playing video games! Now my son has a career option too!
Tom Tsquared Taylor must be on cloud 9!

Call it the Microsoft vision of marketing. Taking everyday folks, or people with one quirky talent, and using them to sell their computers. And hey, it’s working out better than their ads with a traditional star like Jerry Seinfeld!
Via David Hauslib’s post.

It is an amazing feeling to see my face on the new Dr Pepper bottle, said Tom Tsquared Taylor of team Str8 Rippin. I am honored that Dr Pepper has invested in Major League Gaming and put so much support behind me and my teammates.
via GotFrag

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…on September 17 when some senior students stripped him and urinated on him in the name of ragging. He lodged a complaint with the college,

and next day the seniors were suspended for three weeks. The parents of the victim and the seniors met at the college, apologies were made and a compromise was arrived at. The suspension was lifted on October 6.

Two days later the seniors beset Sanjay again for complaining against them; this time it got violent, he was cut all over with a blade and, he charged in a police complaint, sexually assaulted.

via rediff.com

Reading the above article, a few things struck me as very significant. 

Crime reduced to a hazing incident initially
Its very pathetic that absolute crime is categorized as the usual ragging [hazing] incident. People only paid attention when the victim was traumatized again and visible blade marks on the skin was what brought attention to the victim.

Ragging is a traditional and accepted method of getting to know juniors in an informal way, within the walls of an education institution. This is a method that I have yet to see eye to eye with as i do not construe this as either effective or friendly. My take is that people with a sadistic bent of mind enjoy ragging others.   I have seen friendly teasing go out of hand several times.  How can ragging not go out of hand?

The usual “we are working on it, and unnecessarily blown out of hand” approach from the institute
I am actually glad that Sanjay’s father is at least listening.  Most such incidents stem from a power nexus.  The institute’s eagerness to not have any ‘incident’, moneyed people who pay to keep their ill bred kids in the system, and police who hesitate to pursue action because of ‘big people’ being involved.  The victim would have been a statistic, but for the fact that a news portal is now involved.  I am sure that for every Sanjay in the news, there are atleast 100 others in India and elsewhere, who never get any justice.

Greedy Parents who are blind to their children’s trauma
As long as parents in India refuse to recognize that there is life beyond engineering, medicine and American software jobs, we will only generate victims who are told to ‘adjust’ and not let down the hopes of their parents and family etc. and not to ruin chances for a better future.  What future?  I think for a person this is a serious life altering event, and no child of sixteen should undergo this. 

Poor category of laws in India

I suggest that ragging be treated as a punishable offense and strong laws be implemented.  And an institution should be black listed including loss of accreditation, if there are more than 5 complaints against it.  Obviously institutes would try to hush things up, but if there is some fear of punishment, they should be able to crack down such behaviour, and not let anti social elements pose as ’students’ !

If this is how the stronger sex is treated, i shudder to think what girls have to go through?

If you are so inclined, read about ragging in India.

Origin Of Ragging
Today, ragging may have become deep rooted in the Indian educational set up, but many would be surprised to know that ragging is originally a western concept. Ragging is supposed to have its creation in certain European Universities where seniors played practical jokes at the time of welcoming freshmen to the institutions. Gradually, the practice of ragging became popular throughout the world. However, with time, ragging assumed obnoxious and harmful connotations and was severely condemned. Today, almost all countries of the world have enacted stern laws that ban ragging and it has been completely eradicated in countries such as Canada and Japan. But sadly, India, which inherited ragging as a legacy from the British Raj, has not been able to free itself from the clutches of this inhuman practice. It can be said, without any room for doubt, that the worst form of ragging is committed in India. Infact, according to a research conducted by CURE , India and Sri Lanka are the only two countries in the world where ragging exists.
via http://www.legalserviceindia.com

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