Mystic Ranger

Some more Spectrums, and random stuff

2009-02-17T08:07:00.001-08:00

Like it? This might be some of the last abstract stuff I put up on my blog. This is definitely the LAST post I'm making on this sticky piece of shit, which temporarily I had justified sticking to, called Blogger. Till the time, I get my own domain, my brother offered a nice alternative of sharing a subdomain on his existing domain. So, I now have http://vishesh.vineesh.info. Woohoo!! :D I shall be setting up an auto-redirect soon enough.

Also, if you think my shifting to WP makes me choose a non-black theme, you are so mistaken. :P It does not. But still, see you at the mystic ranger's new haunt! :D

Announcements

2009-02-17T04:29:00.001-08:00

The theme for this blog's changing! This choice has been tougher than any of my designs, and its taken nearly over a week, trawling through hundreds of templates on hundreds of sites, mostly through SmashingMag. I have, sort of, made a decision, and I just need to wait until Blogger's server becomes stable enough to be able to change my theme (the unstable piece of shit, that Blogger is. Even its support forums are so stupid and useless. Without any moderator or anything, its just got brainless bozos racking abuses out on the same error code, and nobody doing anything about them.
I have set up an e-mail subscription form in my sidebar. Please subscribe. :). Also, I have set up an RSS feed with a feed icon made all by me, and some help from a previously made basic vector piece of thing which I got at FeedIcons.com (the DevKit).
I want to direct my "art" towards more directed things. Would you please suggest me some good topics I could make art on. I wouldn't even mind if you used them for your own writings. (It'd just have my V every time. :))
I am gonna be directing my further posts towards more literary stuff very soon. So prepare to see "my wisdom". Especially if you thought I had none. :)
I've installed this ratings plugin called Outbrain. It displays ads beneath a star set. I get no money for the ads so don't click them at all! :P But please do give ratings. Its way easier than writing an entire comment, and gives me the satisfaction to know that you cared to see. [Of course, it goes without saying, that higher ratings would be preferred - but honesty more important perhaps... ;)] The problem is that this far, the only ratings that have been given, are either by me myself, or my brother. :O
I have hit 3^5 hits on my blog as I write this (according to the lamer "licznik counter" which is also older, but also counts my own hits.) Only 9 hits away from 6^2 x 7 hits, i.e. 42 x 6 hits. :D Lol[ax]. (And already 7 hits ahead of 42 x 6 hits on the better, but later, sitemeter counter. That's at 19 x 7 by the way.)
Have you noticed wordpress-type smilies popping up on my blog everywhere? Cause I think I did succeed in installing them, and I can see them. Tell me if you can't, I'll try to do something about it.... :|.

Spectrum Part-II

2009-02-17T04:25:00.000-08:00

This spectrum art was made before the previous one was, But I still liked this one more. Also, its "Made on a Mac". For any criticizers, you have to accept that beyond all their complaints, they have to accept that Macs are definitely good for two things: Showing off to naive retarded friends making them bow to you in awe of the [rather lame] machine; and for design - its own, and the software that run on it. I'm pretty sure Adobe actually make all their s/w with a bias towards Mac OS giving it lots of additional features. It sounds irrational, but I think so. And aslo, there are man more intense design s/w s that run only on macs. Thus giving them a very unfair edge in designing. And the result was really cool... or so I think. :D

Spectrums - my new playfield...

2009-02-16T03:56:00.001-08:00

I've been playing around with new types of gradients, which include the spectrums one, and the Color Harmonies one. This is something I recently made...
Like it?

Where my blog resides...

2009-02-16T03:43:00.001-08:00

This was a rather tough decision. Trust me. It was.
I mentioned in my last-to-last post that I might be shifting my blog to Wordpress. After evangelizing it, and making another friend shift from his blogger blog to a wordpress blog, I myself assessed whether I should shift or not. Especially since I had a [very small amount of] traffic coming here and feared that shifting might make me lose even that!
So I summed up what all I thought Wordpress could give me and what I'd thought Blogger couldn't. Since I was competing Blogger with free Wordpress hosting, my inal verdict was in favour of Blogger. No doubt, WP[.org] services on paid hosting are par imaginable excellence, I will stick to Blogger until I get my own domain.
Wordpress gives:

Upload "blog Picture" which then becomes your blog's favicon
It gives you the option to insert Meta tags in your posts which help improve SEO of your blog's content. One of the grounsd due to which my blog got a porrwebsite score on the grader from Hubspot, beside.
It also gives you the option to give your images a caption and specify the alt text, right as you upload it, so without any hassle, your images become more searchable. That is absolutely essential for images of blogs like mine since I wish my images do come up in image searches of relevant things.
It has a much more beautiful Dashboard. [Ah! Now you can't accept this without seeing it. Wordpress 2.7 I believe is one of the best things to happen to Blogging! :)]
It is faster, built with much better AJAX.
Its image uploading is far more comfortable than in Blogger, and also, has a resizable post editor box, which can even be stretched to fullscreen. If you've cared to upload images in Blogger, you would've seen how the image comes in the top of the post, and how, if your image is large, it takes a huge amount of effort to drag it down and below at the end of the text, where it ought to be. Also, the post editor is amazingly rigid, and sometimes, the HTML editor does stretch out, but rarely, if ever, does my Visual editor show the ability to expand or resize.
Wordpress is much more actively spreading, and evolving. Blogger is like a dead creature in front of the pace with which Wordpress has developed. Also, this rapid progress, has lent it to be a better and stabler platform than Blogger is. More often than not, blogger tells you that its experienced an error with a freakingly scary and long code. It tells you could discuss this with other blogger bloggers who've experienced the problem and have a thread with the error code in the subject. Twice now, and that too with different errors, Blogger's forum has been of no help as nobody's cared to post anything pertaining to the topic. [Neither did I in fact. I had no idea what to, actually!]
Way better and more professional themes with heavy customizability, and a small array of widgets, but each with a specific aim. Also, unlike Blogger's many widgets, the widgets Wordpress does choose and offer, are well tested and never stop working. :) If you know the "This widget is broken sign" I'm talking about which often comes up on the blog, publicly (and rather shamelessly) if the widget wasn't from the right "coder".

What Blogger gives, in return (or how I overcame the problems, and in the face of such adversity and doubt, managed to stick to my original blog):

I have learnt of a method to put up a favicon in blogger thanks to Blogger's open permission to me to edit the source code of my template.
I now use scribefire. A purely outstanding Firefox add-on, which is in effect an in-browser post editor. It not only lets me insert Technorati tags, it also lets me choose servers from which I can choose to receive ping-backs. I don't really know how that worls, but the description has a nice ring to it. :)(I am writing this post in ScribeFire, since at this precise moment, I am entirely offline.)
I decided to care to remember to do that manually by going into the
HTML editor everytime I insert an image. Really helpless in such a case.
[Beautiful Dashboard] Can't be matched - will have to do without it.
Again can't be matched... Actually Scribefire not only matches the ease and speed, it beats it in the fact that ScribeFire is entirely offline.
ScribeFire uploads the image properly, but offers another trouble in exchange. It does not resize the image according to my themes posting space, and the image, especially those which I make with my customary 800X800 dimensions, get entirely screwed up. But I manage...
Now I really can't match the evolution of the platform by anything except for the fact, that ScribeFire's developing just as fast (or so I like to think).

Wordpress fanboys, including my brother insist that I use ScribeFire for my wordpress blog. Blogger, and everything google, sucks. (I'll explain that later on when I have even more time at hand). I believe another one of my friends would support his views. But the thing is that I've actually put some effort into customizing the feeds for this blog (and I care despite the fact that I have no subscribers apart from my bro), and also inserted too many widgets to shift them all. I like them all and after all is said and done free Blogger, also has some leads over free WP.

Blogger lets me freely change my template's source code, thus with cursory knowledge of XHTML and CSS, I can customize the fonts to extend beyond the regular options, like entering Lucida Grande as one of the first options for people who have it.
It lets me use any theme that works on it. WP blocks my theme usage to a select number.
I have 2GB of extra space. I know that by the time I get about to using 5 GB, or even 3 GB of bandwidth, I'll definitely have the money to have my own domain, but I still like to hold that reason as another justifying thing for my sticking-to-Blogger-despite-personal-hypocritic-hatred-towards-Google behaviour.
I can use interactive widgets like outbrain on my free blogger whereas there are no options for widgets like that which I can use in free WP. That is very annoying.

Oh well, I think that's about it. I know that this extensive list is of no use to anybody at all. The reason that I still post is that I wanna try to manage to make two posts per week. And such "stuff"'s gonna help do that. :)

Also, please try to subscribe to my email feed using the form beside - the 3rd from the top widget. And comment on whatever you thought about this or any other post. And you can even try giving me some starred rating using the outbrain widget that I currently use. It comes at the end of the post. :). Thnx for reading if you did. Even if you didn't thanks for visiting. At least i got a visit! :) Technorati Tags: wordpress, blogger, free wordpress, benefits of blogger,

Happy Valentine's Day! :D

2009-02-12T04:15:00.001-08:00

It's Valentine's Day!Or is about to come pretty soon anyways... I know nobody reads my blog, but I made something special for the occasion. ;D
Don't ask, for whom, cause it ain't for anybody in particular. I was just getting super-fed up of all the red hearts the people were putting up on their blogs and sites. Especially the abundant quantity of design blogs I've been through, in the last few days, has not only humbled me about my [super] poor skills in Photoshop, but has also frustrated me about the numerous brushes, textures, and people have been putting up, all gushing with a repulsive redness in them. So here's a piece of my heart... ;P

Red's cliched and so is the arrow! :P So here's the black heart with the new-age lighting.
Of course, it'll be a way too huge effort to make the stupid kid who irresponsibly throws this stuff at not-so-prepared-for-it guys and gals. But I'll be trying. Any suggestions on how to make the hole through which that lightning's passing, better, are more than welcome - they're needed! :). So your comments, suggestions, please. :)

P.S: For all the visually retarded viewers of mine, which includes, if any at all, a pending notice, that I have set up a Feedburner E-mail subscription Form to the right, and also an RSS feed button "handcrafted" by me, using a by-defined, very cool, AI image from the Feedicons Devkit.

Riding on the waves!!

2009-02-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

Wave: Part I. Not really much of a wave.

Wave Part II - This is not connected to the previous one. Although the following ones are all out from this.

Wave Part III: Some Inherent Turbulences :D.

And Wave Part IV: All ready to shimmer and fall back. :)
So, how'd you like the series? Want a continuation?

A Redevelopment

2009-02-01T23:58:00.000-08:00

I had actually made the thing in the "Happy New Year" post, on Photoshop 7. It's amazing how when you're at it, and you're not such an expert after all, the device at hand never seems to matter! Well, I'd actually something that screamed my name out way more than just the V. If anybody wants to know how I made it though, I'd definitely like to put up a cursory "tut". ;). This is what I'd originally made. (Actually, I'd made it on my sister's computer and the real original thing had her name on it.)
Well, here goes...

Happy New Year!

2009-01-30T04:53:00.000-08:00

I know you'd say I'm late. Well, I know I am. So there's no point telling me. :P
Well, I've been around, here and there - and visibly, mostly there. Vain attempts to stick around here for any substantial time and manage to make a post have been spoilt, again as would be visible. So there's a lot to say.

I'm sad that the single post I made having 5 pieces of art received lesser comments than other single-art posts. Well, I believe there can be too much of a good thing (or perhaps, ugly things heh:) ), in one go.
A L o t ta people took a review of the year that had passed by. Actually even more did, but these were three which I cared to read. I thought that it was pretty silly to care about what had happened. So I took to making a list. Not a list of resolutions. Ohh, resolutions are such a cilched word, Id never in a lifetime use them. And since the list is so impossible, I'd only dream about resolving to do them all. Here goes, in this year I plan to learn the following things:

Maya
Flash [with actionscript]
better Ps
better Ai
C++ programming
heuristics (?!)
make a [fractal-generating] software****
Mathematica
CSS
php
XML

I know its impossible to the point of frivolity, but it's stupid if I don't try at all, isn't it?

3. I have been making some more art, and putting many more widgets in the sidebar. Some might feel irritated - if you do, don't tell me cause I'm not gonna change. :P Just kidding. Comment for whatever you like, I luuurrrvvv comments. Although I very irresponsibly forget to reply to many, so forgive me, if I ahve ne that to you. and keep commenting.

4. Finally my art-of-the-post. I've learnt more of filters, and it's really fun. Even GIMP filters are real fun. One of them's actually a fractal-generation filter, and I just love the starburst one. It's beautiful. This thing's psd is 63 MB heavy, so don't even dream of asking me for it, if you can't meet me personally with a storage device. And it's even my new desktop wallpaper. Perhaps, you could've guessed that seeing the resolution. Yeah - I have a 19-inch monitor. Not news to most, though...

So, adieu for the time-being. Also, I'll might soon shift to Wordpress, so be ready for it... :D Keep reading, commenting, and hating me .X-D

My first Designed T-shirt

2008-12-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

cool ain't it?

and, a belated Merry Christmas, winter solstice (:D I love this), and a happy new year in advance. Should be coming up with some art related to that pretty soon... or hopefully so. :S

Really! <_>

2008-12-21T03:16:00.000-08:00

Please! Link to this blog, tell others about it. Even if you hate it, please. And also, comment.

Btw, this image was taken from here who took it from there...

Another Self-Obsession ooops... Possession :D

2008-12-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

Nice, eh?

Some quick new art from me

2008-12-10T08:19:00.001-08:00

A pretty fish. Made by me. :)

This was done from a tutorial. And even one of the key things which was the feather brush was provided ready-made. Not really cool, after knowing this is it?

Guess What this is? I named it "the incomplete man".

This was supposed to be my white ribbon against the terror attacks in Mumbai. Couldn't make a better one. :(. But still, my solace is in its orginality. Like in The Frog And the Nightingale [;)]
“I don't think the song's divine.
But – oh, well – at least it's mine”.
Same for my ribbon. :D. And I do have a lot of views about those terrorists which I'd love to express sometime soon...

Modern art. By me. :D

Life's running! :)

2008-11-24T03:14:00.000-08:00

My first (or one of the first show-able) tries with brushes. And yes, the man was meant to be running, not dancing or skating. :|

I hope the title helps in complementing the start of the previous post as well.

Also, this post is 2 and a half months old. I don't know why it was in the transit for so long, but oh well... There you go.
Hope you like it, and also comment on it. :) (Don't I beg just too much? :S)

My Improved inbox Part-II

2008-11-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

So, people were actually interested in knowing how I got my amazing inbox. Here we go.

Get BetterGmail 2 or whichever is their most latest version. It is a FireFox add-on and it's really amazing, trust me. I might know and use a 1000 add-ons, like the most weird ones, but better Gmail is good. This is how you download it (for the real retards :)):

Now, restart your firefox to make the add-on enabled (duh!), open the add-ons box from Tools>Add-ons, click on the extensions options, then select better-gmail (it must ideally be selected by-default. Ideally when you restart your fx right after installing only better gmail, the add-ons box will open by itself with the better-gmail selected.), and click on the options that appears when you select it. Then, go to the skins tabs in that box, and select gmail redesigned.

A much easier option would be to install google redesigned :D. Go to globexdesign.com/gr, and install the add-on that comes on the page. It not only redesigns your gmail, without any tweaks, but also redesigns you Gcal page.
If your gmail does not get redesigned by itself, you'll see a weird icon of a moon-like G, with a small R in the centre of it. Right-click on it, select Gmail, and then Redesigned, v. [nwhatever].

Oh, and if you haven't got Firefox, you ought to commit suicide in the deepest well you can find, cause you're missing out on everything you could, from the world of browsers. (And obviously from a way better Gmail inbox ;)).

[Not] My Eye

2008-10-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

Which do you think is better? Please leave your comments and suggestions.
I just got to know that people actually visit my blog and don't leave comments.
That is ghastly! I hope you please cease doing this and comment whatever, about whatever, wherever, at least I'll know you saw my designs (read:crap). Please.
For without encouragement[, or otherwise,] I feel so deserted, and continually feel like changing my blog title to MYSTIC and LONELY ranger. Seriously.
Sob, sob.:(

My horizontal snowman

2008-10-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

How'd u like this?

Up, Up and Away

2008-10-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Here launches our country's first moon mission. Although unmanned, it (supposedly) bring[s] our country great pride and (somehow ?!) marks a launch-off our country's progress radically.
The real interesting and cool thing I found was this image released by our country's ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) on their main chandrayaan page

at http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan-1/

More design: My Art part-III

2008-10-22T09:10:00.001-07:00

This is my evil pacman. Do you like him?

Please tell me how to improve. I am making such things out of desparation and lack of ideas. Give me an intriguing title and I'll try to make something out of it.

My Improved inbox

2008-10-22T00:41:00.000-07:00

Be Jealous! :D

Need I say more?

Woohoo!!!

2008-10-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

Things seem to be changing quite fast, and for the (much-)better!
I won the regionals of the Jack Kilby Science And Technology Quiz 2008, with my partner, Aditya Grover.
My half-yearlies just ended, and they were better than what most of my half yealries are, I would say. And for some time, I seem to have all the time in my life I could.

One of the tougher questions of the quiz on saturday, the 18th (which of course we couldn't answer!)

What is the significance of this image in the history of Science, who took it and what is it? (the first and the last part of the question is the same)
Hint given to us: It is an X-ray image.
Answer, and a detailed description along with as many questions as I remember shall be up soon. Keep checking this space for more.

For "Addy"'s (Yes he's the Aditya Grover who partnered me) request on My art part-II. I modified the blue to black and this is what came out.

My wierd circle... :S

2008-10-17T06:35:00.001-07:00

Here goes another try at digital art. I wasn't as enraptured by this one as my moon but still, see if you like it.

Flock 2.0: The Inside Story

2008-10-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

An Amazing Experience. I only tried Flock 2 Beta 3 cause I wanted to use the (unofficial) portable version from here or directly download the version I have from here. Btw , proper portable versions of the final release have also been made.

It is an amazingly functional interface where you have an in-built blog editor, and a really capable sidebar that can mark your presence on just about every networking site you may have heard of as being used by many. When you open the browser, an inevitable "My World Page" opens up in which the left column is covered by diggs, etc which are shown on your set preferences, the middle column is ur updates followed on twitter, FB, etc. The rightmost, I believe is for youtube and videos, cause right now it tells me, learn HowToFlock on YouTube. No number of Add-ons in Firefox, under those known by me can also match all those capabilities of Flock. And if you know me, you would know that it counts. ;D Lastly, you can trust it cause in essence, its yet another browser based on the fx3 architecture. Have a try. You ought to like it.

2008-10-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

Oh man! I have so fallen in love with the looks of my inbox

Need I say more?

My moon...

2008-10-11T01:55:00.000-07:00

No Really! I DID!!!

And sorry for the tm thingie. Just put it for a bit of fun...
[UPDATE: On popular demand, some comments, some verbal accusations, the image has been modified as the tm has been removed. I am no more sorry. :P]

The Alchemist

2008-08-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

An amazing story with everything one could expect to be in it - and much more! The Alchemist was a book I had mainly heard from others was boring. But I never found it even close to that. It was gripping, if not in its storyline (ok, if you read books only for a story, you may not like this book…) it was captivating in its insightful philosophies. For one of the first times, I actually found the reviews about the book true, it was one of the first books I had read in my life which actually changed the way I think about living through life. It talked about zillions of things in extremely simple ways, so simple that you feel very hard-hit by their elementary truthfulness. It even concludes in the end, in one of the ways that the one of the biggest problems of humanity was their belief that nothing could be as simple and clear as it is. The real alchemist also tells the protagonist, Santiago, that Alchemy wasn’t as great or tough as it had been made to look. The Alchemist had been successful in his science because he had recognized how it was his destiny to be able to heal people and also and that it was bound for him to be able to do that. He clearly says that the entire science of alchemy “had been written on an emerald tablet. But people had written thousands of books of thousands of pages after thousands of attempts because they did not manage to believe in the simpleness of life.
The book also talks detailedly about how one should follow his destiny as that was the only purpose of one’s life and existence. One’s destiny was written by the same hand, that of God, and so was the destiny of everything else. Also, everything was bound to each other by a unifying object called the Soul of the World. This reminded me of an Avatar episode in which the Avatar realizes that “everything is interconnected”, said in a much more encompassing statement in this book as “All things are one.” It also says how the soul of the World provided a medium for all sorts of life and also non-living objects to communicate with each other without the use of any orthodox or commonly known language. Following one’s destiny is the key theme of the book as written on the cover of the book, which says – “A magical Fable about following your dream”. It says a lot of things as to how the most important thing in the world for any one person was to follow his dream as that was a sign of his destiny. How the entire universe conspires to make you successful in whatever you desire to achieve (This line disclosed the source of the highly popular line of OSO which happened to be a straight rip-off or translation of the original English sentence), and how the Soul of the World tries its best to guide you through to your destiny by leaving a trail of omens and it all depended if one chose to follow them and get subdued by the oppressive noise made by everyone around who talked about what other would become. It said that very often people get more involved in thinking about the destinies and characters of other people and in the process forget thinking about their own destinies. Following your heart was an essential step in reaching your destiny as it was bound to the Soul of the World and knew what one wanted to achieve. It also told us throughout our lives what we ought to be but if we, like average people ignored it for long, its voice got lost in the din of the surrounding world. Also, when one set out to follow one’s heart he was greeted by something the book called beginner’s luck in which the person was extremely lucky in his initial attempts. [This beginner’s luck was an omen of the Soul of the World to us that we were on the right path and ought to follow it.] It also said that after one’s beginner’s luck dried up, most people gave up on their dreams and ended up failing in achieving their destiny however close they had reached to it. That is how the achieving of one’s destiny always started with beginner’s luck but ended with the warrior’s victory. I felt very touched by the entire story and for the first time, due to the relation with the universe’s omens, I did not feel that the twists and turns were misplaced and also felt that they might have been very real for all I know.

I wonder why I wonder

2007-05-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

The world is so entrancing,
So captivating in its way.
That I begun burning, [with jealousy!]
Dark clouds darkening my day.

Even the clouds they are so lovely,
I feel like stealing them.
To wear their wonderful beauty,
emphasizing their silver hem.

Oh! Why is it only me,
Who is so deeply lost in wonder?
They live and let live with glee,
On them I have no time to squander.

And so,
I turned my head around,
And in my eye, time stared.
My mind floated off the ground,
To ask them, then I dared.

Why, my friend are you so queer?
A boon, a bane everything.
You, in my heart invoke great fear;
Please stop this fanciful playing.

Time looked at me,And ticked away;
ticked away to glory.
And as it did this magical act,
Upon my grave I lay.

I saw everything I wanted to see,
I realized and so, understood.
Ahead was He, the mighty God.
And there he calmly stood.