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UX Design Mantra

  • Pretty design is not a substitute for flawed logic.
  • Good design is telling users what to do. Great design is knowing what user is about to do.
  • Best error message is no message at all.
  • Design is a solution not beautification.
  • What works for them may not work for you.
  • Learn from yesterday, work hard today, design for tomorrow.

Continue reading “UX Design Mantra”

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Be a Sustainable Superhero – 3 Easy things you can do

Green technology, sustainable technology, or sustainable designs are some of the buzzwords of our time. What does it exactly mean? At the core of it, it’s an attempt to eliminate negative environmental impact and waste prevention through design. It all sounds grand. To many of us it sounds like something that only scientists, government or people who are smarter than us should be concerned with. But sustainability isn’t rocket science. I can think of three dead simple things you can do right at home right now that satisfies all of the sustainable design principles.
Even if you are someone who don’t give a damn about sustainability, green, earth, or whatever, the following info will make your life a bit simpler, less annoying and even save you some money. Continue reading “Be a Sustainable Superhero – 3 Easy things you can do”

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In search for a Super Consumer

What was once called the “Information Superhighway” has become “Information Wasteland”. We’re now experiencing severe information overload to a point where the information itself ceases to be beneficial and becomes the source of confusion for many people. Anything about everything is supported or opposed mostly without clear authoritative source and is accessible to everybody who are once again left to their own devices to decide what to accept or reject. So in effect, we’re no better now than 30 or 40 years ago when we didn’t have easy access to a wealth of information about anything. Continue reading “In search for a Super Consumer”

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WordPress Twentythirteen

It’s been a long time, been a long time,
been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
Yes it has.

Been too busy with work. Haven’t had energy left to touch my own stuff.
But I’m finally updating the site with WP Twentythirteen. It has responsive structure built right into the theme. And it’s pretty good. Much improved from Twentytwelve theme. Although the theme has responsiveness built in, it does not have the responsive grid. You’d need to integrate third party grid plugins or make your own which is very simple to do.

Anyhow, as of today, my site is still work in progress. It’s using a heavily modified child theme based off Twentythirteen.

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Oh my, what’s up at Apple…

I really couldn’t care less about the fact that the new iPhone that Apple introduced three months late wasn’t an iPhone5. However, as a web designer, I do seem to notice somethings more than others. Things like how they present new products on their website, design, layout, etc.

If you visited apple.com today, you’ll see that somebody was in a terrible hurry to get the iPhone site up. The iPhone images used in the slides weren’t properly cropped. Someone forgot to remove the white background on the corners and between the buttons. This became obvious because they added drop shadows behind the phones (I’m sure Apple probably have fixed this by the time anyone reads this post).

Things like this never happen on apple.com. Normally, something like this would never fly under designer’s radar at Apple or elsewhere. There’s only one explanation for such goof up. The phone images were switched at the very, very last minute. So last minute that no one at Apple had a chance to review the page.
Maybe it was images of iPhone5 that was originally meant for this animation. We’d never know…

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Fixing Samsung LCD TV – follow up

I posted an article on how to repair the non-powering up Samsung LCD TV. Here’s the original post.

Quite a few people have e-mailed me saying that they could not find the same capacitors at Radio Shack.
Remember, as I stated in my original post, you’re NOT looking for the exact same capacitors at Radio Shack.
Chances are you’re not going find the exact capacitor with the same voltage rating like the one Samsung originally used.
For my LN Series Samsung LCD TV, I boiught 1000uf, 35v capacitor (uf = microfarad).
It’s a 1000 microfarad, 35 volt. The old ones on the TV I believe are 10v. You’re actually buying a higher voltage capacitor for this repair. Higher voltage capacitors should hold up better. So do not go into Radio Shack looking for 1000uf, 10v capacitor. You’ll not find it.

CAPACITOR TO GET:
1000uf, 35v

Remember not to reverse the polarity (+/-) on these capacitors. The negative side is marked with a big (-) symbol. Make note of the sides before removing the old ones.

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Somebody pull his head out of his arse already.

Will Zuck’s arrogance ever see an end? Facebook claims that their new messaging system will render e-mails and phone numbers obsolete. How are they planning to achieve this exactly? I don’t know. Maybe someday phone numbers or e-mails as we know it will become useless. But it surely won’t be because of Facebook. Not that over 90% of phone user in the world are not Facebook users. Or that the Facebook account itself relies on one having an external e-mail address to begin with.

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Origin of Numbers

Have you ever wondered how Arabic numbers as we know it have come to take its current shape and form? I have taken few minutes to create this simple graph that outlines the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals glyphs.

Notice that 1, 2, and 3 started as mere count of an object – a stick.
Number 4 probably meant a quadrant or dividing something into four.
Seven looks like it’s always been seven as we know it.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab

Samsung releases a product that has potential and actually could be useful, something that Apple’s iPad never was. The Samsung Galaxy Pad is smaller than the too-big-to-be-portable-iPad. It packs lot of features that puts iPad to extreme shame. In comparison to the iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Pad provides consumers what they want from the get go rather than purposely holding back features for later releases in attempt to secure future sales – a strategy obviously apparent in Apple’s recent products.

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The iPhone Cover-Up

The new iPhone 4, like generations before it, is a beautifully styled object. It appears cunningly simple at first but the amount of attention given to detail and design of each piece that make up the exterior is truly admirable. The texture, the curve, the sheen and the bevel of each button and pieces are styled and carved to make this one of the most strikingly elegant industrial design in recent years. Continue reading “The iPhone Cover-Up”

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How I fixed my Samsung LCD TV

Everyone now can be an expert in anything with the help of the internet. Here’s how I DIY’d my Samsung LCD TV and saved $300 – $400.
The LN series Samsung LCD TV never really powers up instantly even when new. But the time it takes to power up the TV took longer and longer (as long as 10 minutes in some cases). The LED light on the power button would flash with clicking sound. This will eventually lead to your TV not powering up at all. Mind you, the TV is less than 2 years old. Turns out that this is a known problem with most Samsung LCD TVs with model number starting with “LN” and slew of other models as well. Continue reading “How I fixed my Samsung LCD TV”

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Scarface School Play

People who came up with this should hang themselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uovMpapeCJQ.

You don’t have to be a model citizen to see this is totally inappropriate. Replacing swear words with “motherfudgers” doesn’t make it any safer for kids. What’s a swear word? Is it merely a collection of alphabets that make up a word? Is it not a swear as long as it’s misspelled or pronounced differently? No. swear words are contextual expression of hate. Exact pronunciation and spelling of it is irrelevant because they’re merely a representation of the emotion behind it. When someone swears at one in foreign language, it’s the emotion that gets the point across not the word itself. Think about how some people use the word “fuck”. It can be used to express anger but it also can be used to express amazement in a positive context.

People who made this video are f****g morons.

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Is social media making us anti-social?

I believe technology should enrich our lives, make our everyday a bit more interesting and garnish the life we already have as humans in a society. It should not be something that enslaves us.
Look what’s happening around you. Many so called ‘social’ media is actually making people anti-social. The addiction toward technology and social media is so severe that people rarely talk or mingle in person. Continue reading “Is social media making us anti-social?”

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Amazing Sand Artist

She uses sand on a lightbox. Not only she draws but the drawings transition into sequence of scenes which tell a story which in itself is in  sync with the music throughout the entire thing. Absolutely amazing!

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It’s easy being Picasso

Seriously. Picasso created art as he saw fit. No one questions Picasso. If Picasso decides a woman’s right eye should be twice as large than the other, no one dared to argue otherwise. When Picasso sees a nostril of a goat would be a good match for a woman’s face, people go crazy throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at it.

I would guess that Picasso rarely had to deal with user experience, commercial feasibility, cultural compatibility, revisions, or approvals from fifteen different people. Those things are what lowly designers like us worry about. Because um…, we’re not Picasso.

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Complainers are innovators in web development

For those of us who have been developing websites since the 1990s, it’s easy to lay back and say “it won’t get any better than this” as far as front-end development and client-side technologies go. We’ve lived through the early days of web development using primitive HTML tags, rustic browsers, and all of the growing pains of web. It’s amazing how the craft has improved over the years. Stylesheets are now well supported, browsers are much smarter and compliant, not to mention numerous javascript libraries and access to developer communities. So it’s easy to think this is the pinnacle for our tools of the trade. Continue reading “Complainers are innovators in web development”

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You suck at Photoshop

If you haven’t seen You suck at Photoshop tutorials, start watching now. Not only you learn quite a bit on how to use Photoshop for your everyday casual use, the guy is hillarious. It’s not all jokes and comedy. These are genuine Photoshop tutorials. And no, the guy isn’t retarded. He just talks that way and it works. Here are few of my favorite ones. Discover them all on youtube.