Quote for the Day

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it
- G.K. Chesterton

Inkscape Drawings 1

Just want to show you guys what I did in Inkscape....comment away!!( constructive criticism is very welcome)

Enso Launcher

As a programmer, I use the computer everyday. Over the years, I have noticed two things that were very obvious but I have brushed off as trivial or non-relevant. One of this is that as you use your workstation longer, the desktop become slowly cluttered with shortcuts to applications or whatnot. Another is that we tend to follow some sort of a routine somewhere that consists of many steps. For example, to access applications in the workstation, you either open up windows explorer and press a few clicks to get to what you want or simplify things by creating a shortcut of it in the desktop. Unfortunately, if you try to apply the latter solution to your applications, your desktop becomes more cluttered as we add more applications in our computer. Wouldn't it be great if our desktop is clear and we only need to type what we want to launch that application?

A few days ago, I stumbled upon a software that does just exactly that. I got it from the humanized site after someone mentioned that it was a great time saver. Curious as I am, I downloaded the application and installed on the computer.I fired it up.....and got confused. I didn't get it the first time though. So I read the tutorials and finally understood what to do.

Basically its like a windows command line on steroids. Opening a file, going to a folder, launching an application,etc...it can do all this and more. And the best thing about it is that you can define your own custom shortcuts!!! To do this, simply highlight the item you want to make a shortcut of, then activate enso, type "learn as open [app]" where [app] is your preferred name of your shortcut. After doing this, you can simply type "open [app]" to launch the shortcut. It is as simple as that. But think of it. To access a favorite folder, you only have to type it. No more endless clicking and switching of tabs. It is really a time saver.

After getting this program...I have been free from desktop clutter which used to plague my desktop. Now wallpapers look much better than before! Don't believe me? Just look how clean my desktop is ;P



I highly recommend it. I liked it very much. I think you will too......or not :P

Link : http://www.humanized.com

3 kinds of people you will meet.

There are 3 kinds of people whom you meet.

1. Those who are with you.
   
2. Those who are against you.
   
3. Those who don't give a damn

;)

Loneliness

Loneliness can strike you even if you are at the top
It does not give a damn whether you are hot or not :P

Photo editing...or creating incredibly amatuerish drawings

I have always loved pictures. Who doesn't? I mostly love pictures of nature especially the seashore. It always have some kind of relaxing effect on me.

So it is not surprising that I would take the next step, to create pictures of my own. Given my proximity to the world of technology, it is no surprise that I am no stranger to photo editing tools. But although I have always seen them in action, I have always been mystified on how to use them. Perhaps because of the narrow view that programmers could not be artists and vice versa that have deterred me from using them. Or because when I do try to use them, I am discombobulated by their complexity ( all those shortcuts and terms scare me ) and end up with a less than satisfactory experience in photo editing.

But life can be strange sometimes. Now I am thrust to a position in which at least a minimal knowledge of photo editing is required. Finally I have an excuse to dive in the photo editing world. I have been exploring a bit and there are two tools that I finally decided to learn. One is Photoshop, an extremely popular proprietary photo editing package and Inkscape, an open source vector graphics editor. Photoshop needs no explanation why it should be learned. It is the industry standard after all. I like Inkscape because it is flexible due to it vector orientation and it has a great user interface in my opinion.

As usual, starting to learn something outside my normal scope of skills is daunting. But I bet this endeavor would be worth it.

Character Generator

I got an idea yesterday evening while typing away in the late hours trying to help my mother finish an encoding task that was given to her by her friend for a non-trivial fee. Since I am still an amateur ( or rather a tryout ) writer, I have poor skills in world building and characterization. I have tried various techniques to create interesting characters but almost always end up creating a cardboard type that's too cliche or a Marty Stu type that is too much of a reflection of my own views. Then I got the idea of making a character generator, the type that will just randomly spit out traits, moods, attitudes, etc. It is definitely not a unique or new idea ( There are tons of character generators available in the internet, mostly for tabletop RPG's ). But since I am programmer, maybe it is worth making one to learn the how it is made. It will also mean custom features in the program, that is I can decide what info the program would churn out.

One of the interesting ways which I can use this program is to churn out a few characters randomly and try to make a plot for them. The idea is silly but I bet it will make my creative juices flow. It would train me to make good plots and flesh out characters.

I will be using Python to make the program since WxPython is the easiest GUI library I have used by far. If there is anyone interested in the program, just mail me and I will keep you posted.

Now if only I can make a world generator :)....