Bhooshan Pandya | Interface & Usability Analyst

I confess that I’ve not come across a superb piece of art called ‘Watchmen’ before. Unlike the west, comics aren’t keenly followed or marketed to a bigger audience in this part of the country. But here’s the thing – it’s usually the artwork that encourages me to buy a comic-book.

The movie version of this comic book was released last year but it’s a misplaced judgment to think that I picked the comic book ONLY for this reason. The artwork of ‘Watchmen’ – colouring, penciling, compositions grabbed my attention, Dave Gibbons has done them so wonderfully. Also all the 12 issues published by DC Comics in a single volume makes it a collector’s item!

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I had the privilege of attending a workshop by Techved Design on writing content for the web. I wasn’t planning to leave the house in the killing humidity and heat but changed my mind thanks to my dearest friend Neha Modgil.

Writing immersible content for the web is always challenging. It’s a medium not known to sustain readership beyond a few seconds. Imagine having to sell a product in a limited amount of time and sustaining the attention span of an online user. This is what the workshop intended to address. Content speaks to a specific audience and good content only makes the actions on the website more compelling.

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Just as there are moments of great achievements in career like a promotion, getting a mac would undoubtedly rank among the higher for me – no less a promotion from a Windows system for me. The journey from knowing a Mac to owning one has been 13 years long. From my first computer lessons on a PowerMac in 1996 to getting a Macbook Pro in 2009. And the moments leading to my first Mac just made it more memorable for me.

FedEx would have delivered the package on March 23rd if Mount Redoubt had not erupted ‘untimely’. All FedEx flights were diverted and the package took a week more than usual for delivery. It was a situation beyond anyone’s control but I was getting impatient. Finally the good news from FedEx that the package had arrived in Regina early morning and was going to be delivered today. No way I was going to miss the delivery schedule (and wait another day). I requested the executive to let me know an hour before the delivery van was at my doorstep so I could go home and she agreed.

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It’s been a while since I have written on my website. The time schedules apart, my motivation for new creative thinking has almost dried up.

I have been on Wordpress since 2005. However I have found that it takes a lot of effort for a single person to update and maintain this highly acclaimed application. I have to take constant back-ups of my database/files/wordpress files and keep up with the current version as and when it has been released. It’s time consuming and stressful and sometimes puts me in a panic state of mind – what if the new upgrade doesn’t work for me.

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I was in a discussion with a friend last weekend at her swank new office. Suddenly we came across a point in social networking and SurfUnion popped up in my mind. If I ever come out with an autobiography there’s sure going to be a chapter dedicated to SurfUnion — a designers forum of which I was a proud member and an architect. Unfortunately the founding of SurfUnion is more interesting and worth discussing than the way we managed it.

In late 2003, five of my close buddies had wanted to do something worthwhile. We were at best designers with creative skills but worked out of home; some of them like me on a paltry sum. On the night of October 2nd, we launched a ‘designers only’ forum hiring some space on Buttclencher’s server. We decided to call it ‘SurfUnion’ or a group of surfing designers. The name took the imagination of all the admins as we liked to call ourselves and later we were joined by many. One of them was a geeky guy nicknamed Bane and was located in Colombo. Five of us – myself, Kreativea (Aadesh), Buttclencher (Raunaq), RanTen (Ranajit Tendolkar) and FlashKid (Isaac) operated from Mumbai. Thus we had a majority stake in the decision making process while LimeIce (Gursimran) located in Delhi and Ryche (Fahd) in Kolkata completed the admin lineup. The fabulous tagline of ‘We put the Desi in Design’ was suggested by Ryche in one of our online sessions. During our tenure, we arranged competitions and meetups that helped bring varied talents face-to-face.

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