“Peace (Japanese)…” my typographic t-shirt, which I just have sold at Redbubble…

“Peace (Japanese)…” my typographic t-shirt, which I just have sold at Redbubble…

Lomo image tutorial

Cool effect… It’s a good photoshop editing tutorial…

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Sugababes - “About You Now (acoustic version)”

Five Simple Rules To Be Happy

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well .
The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.

At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well.

He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL :
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.


Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

  1. Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.
  2. Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
  3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
  4. Give more.
  5. Expect less
“Travel and communicate…” is a graphic, which I just have finished today… To purchase at Redbubble…

“Travel and communicate…” is a graphic, which I just have finished today… To purchase at Redbubble…

Text In Stitches. Photoshop tutorial...

Over the years as a graphic designer I’ve accumulated a wealth of custom brushes, shapes and actions that I keep carefully organized and labeled for future use. The brush set I’ll be sharing with you today has been in my collection for probably five of six years and every once in a while I’ll find a good reason to load it into my brushes palette. If you’ve never done that before, don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it as we go.

If you’re playing along at home you should download the brush set before we get started…

Quote:

There are always two people in every picture:
the photographer and the viewer.End quote.

—Ansel Adams

We don’t have WEST…

Yesterday I was thanking God for my increased ability to see since I photograph (I really have developed sharper sences), because without this, I never had seen that in this simple weather cock, standing at the formaer boarder between West and East Germany, there lays a little protest…

Someone seems not to accept the WEST, changing completely the known directions in North, South, East and…. North!

A Photographer's Guide to Social Media

Excellent tips on maintaining proper grammar and standards when using social media.

Quote:

The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority.End quote.

—Jean Caldwell

The Robin Hood Tax

(support it here!)



A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.

This tax on banks – not you or I - has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year. It could give a vital boost to the NHS, our schools, and the fight against child poverty in the UK – as well as tackling  poverty and climate change around the world.

Not complicated. Just brilliant.

(Source)

Amazing but true facts…

  1. In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi.
  2. The increased electricity used by modern appliance parts is causing a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.
  3. The idea for “tribbles” in “Star Trek” came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant.
  4. Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.
  5. Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.
  6. Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.
  7. The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren’t for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.
  8. The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra.
  9. The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there’s no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.
  10. Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say “gesundheit” to a sneezer was never repealed.
  11. Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don’t do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.
  12. SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.
  13. Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.
  14. Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender’s system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.
  15. Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.
  16. The first McDonald’s restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.
  17. The Air Force’s F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly.
  18. You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite.
  19. Silly Putty was “discovered” as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It’s not widely publicized for obvious reasons.
  20. Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.
  21. The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.
  22. The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.
  23. A cat’s purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White.
  24. The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his “signature” on the keyboard.
  25. The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.
  26. King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.
  27. Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.
  28. In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation.
  29. Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.
  30. Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.
  31. Calvin, of the “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.
  32. Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.
  33. Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels.
  34. You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.
  35. To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.
  36. Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don’t play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten.
  37. A dog’s naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet.
  38. A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one’s nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.
  39. Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden’s headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.
  40. Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.
  41. At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather.
  42. Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.
  43. If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey.
  44. Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms.
  45. Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
  46. Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost “an arm and a leg.”
  47. When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.
  48. Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months.
  49. Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today.
  50. If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.
  51. When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby.
  52. In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models’ turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.
  53. Although difficult, it’s possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.
  54. Napoleon’s favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.
  55. The world’s smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.
  56. Due to the natural “momentum” of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.
  57. In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.
  58. It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo.
  59. The “nine lives” attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers.
  60. The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.
  61. The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

(Source)

Linear gradients for webmasters...

Gradients are presently only supported in Safari 4 and Chrome (webkit) and Firefox 3.6. In webkit they can be used anywhere an image can be - for example background-image, list-style-image, border-image or with generated content. In Firefox they can only be used as background images.

Note webkit based browsers and Firefox have very different syntax for gradients.

If you specify a gradient as a background, be sure to also specify a background color, to ensure text is legible in browsers which don’t support gradients.

Gradients can be linear or radial (this editor creates linear gradients for webkit browsers). In webkit they require a start and stop position and color, and may also take one or more color stops, which specify a color and position. Enjoy playing with gradients!

“The early bird gets the worm”… My newest graphic to purchase at Redbubble, from a small retro collection inspired by Hitchcock, which will grow bigger soon…

“The early bird gets the worm”My newest graphic to purchase at Redbubble, from a small retro collection inspired by Hitchcock, which will grow bigger soon…

Note From Advertising on Google AdWords and Facebook

We’ve recently been test marketing a product and paying for ads on both Google AdWords and Facebook to drive traffic. The type of customers they attract are very different and it’s very important to understand the difference.

Your ads will work differently because people use the sites differently. People use Facebook is for experiencing one’s life. They use Google to solve problems.

People clicking ads on Facebook:

People clicking on Google ads:

They both can be very effective, just make sure your ads are speaking to to how the person is using the site.

(Source)