I’m a big believer in “Quality”, and its what keeps me alive in this business. Its also what attracts others to my work and that is what keeps me satisfied => to grow and grow “the right way” with the web.

Having said that its true that many people do compromise on the quality that they deliver for their clients (especially in Pakistan) and thats a real shame, to say the least….

A good example of what i mean here is at Obaids blog where he talks about the Dawn website and it’s redesign. I mean a huge newsgroup like Dawn cant even develop a decent portal for their users??

I have talked to so many people about this but they just look at me and say “Oh thats an awesome site!!” After all most of them dont have anything to compare it with, nor do they care to. Obaid is one individual that steps up and isnt afraid to speak out loud and have people here his voice. And thats a good thing..

Reasons why “A quality driven approach” in all its entirety has helped me, and might help you too

1. Get noticed and fast with quality over quantity: Might is right just doesn’t work anymore. Try and revel in the LIM Approach (Less is More!)
2. Satisfaction: A deep feeling of satisfaction is achieved when you put the desired effort into your work. At the end of the day if you feel good about your work, you will never work a day in your life.
3. Staying out of your comfort zone: When approaching a solution try and move away from your comfort zone and target higher-end technologies that you don’t really know about. Higher end solutions are always quality driven…
4. Build Confidence: Confidence is one of the keys to success in any business and especially with the ever-changing web. Start out by actually implementing what you have learned into your solutions on a day to day basis.
5. Setting yourself apart from the rest of the pack (Individualism): This is debatable here in Pakistan, nevertheless I still believe that you should distinctly separate your work from the rest of the pack. A v

Ultimately the above reasons is why i have stuck to my guns in the last year and half or so. I could have easily gone the “average” way but what fun and challenge would that be. I like to push myself, and really feel that the youngsters here in Pakistan should also.

If anyone is interested in group learning sessions where we can exchange ideas about how to improve ourselves i am ready.

For free Ruby on Rails training and awareness please visit our company blog

Often while working throughout the day I seek inspiration from different sources. If you watch TV, read the papers, or get your information from the web you will read about “successful” people who have made it in this world.

Success comes in all industries, and I feel that the drive to nurture your talents and never give up hope remain the most valuable lessons learned. You can be sure that these people believed in themselves, planned and worked their asses off to get to an established level.

I just wanted to share with you some people that i took inspiration from today.

KATY PERRY:

Perry was born in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, California, United States. The middle child of two pastors, she grew up listening to gospel music and singing in church. She graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California in 2003 and immediately moved to Los Angeles at the age of eighteen. She changed her surname to Perry because “Katy Hudson” was too close to Kate Hudson. Perry is her mother’s maiden name.

If you have listened to her music ever, its not her looks who attract me (though she is awesome); its more her voice and style that gets me going.

Talk about being a natural..

SARA FROM ON-SIMPLICTY:

Here is another example of a young woman who has a great writing talent and ability to reach out to the general users out there. She blogs at ON-SIMPLICITY about about creating a happier, easier, more enjoyable life for yourselves. Well done Sara, to me the basic’s are Keeping it Simple (no matter what situation you are faced with).

THE FIVE RUNS TEAM:

FiveRuns delivers simple, elegant and affordable products for instrumenting, monitoring and managing Rails application performance.
I got to hand it to the team, their work is extremely impressive. You can see that they have cultivated their talents over the years and come together to form Five Runs as the pinnacle of achievement. True Bliss Fellas, just true bliss. Thats what dreams are made of…

ALINA POPESCU

I’m impressed with Alina’s style of writing and consistent detailing. I feel women are doing very well these days, and this is just one of them whom i think will do very well for herself in the coming years. It’s people like her who will come out considerable better than others in the year 2009+. She is starting her own company soon, and i wish her the best of luck!!

Catch her at her blog: Words of a Broken Mirror

GEOFFREY GROSENBACH

Geoffrey is a serious Rails Developer and founder of PeepCode; a site dedicated to Rails screencasts. Geoffrey has done whole hell of lot for the Rails community and blogs over at: NubyonRails

BAHT (The Reindeer Lover):

Baht is from Mongolia, and herds reindeers for a living. He lives with the reindeer in a tent on some plains near a mountain. His love for reindeer runs deep as he has dedicated his whole life to herding them; this tradition was passed on down for generations.

He trades reindeer antlers to the neighboring Chinese, just to stock up on supplies (flour, wheet, rice etc etc) for the year. Can you imagine living in the freezing cold and having to relocate somewheres away from the snow capped mountains 10 times a year.

Baht is a great example of a passionate man, untainted from the complexities this world throws upon us. Baht, dude i couldn’t find your pic so i added a reindeer one instead. Though is likely you will never see this post, rest assured that there are people who adimire your character.

JON DAHL

I wanted to mention Jon from RailsSpikes (I believe he is also a member of the Five Runs team, or collaborates with them someway.) After reading his post about Running in Packs vs. Going it alone, i was seriously impressed with the amount of intelligence and insight this man has. (he’s not just technically sound, but seems to have a thorough knowledge of the business side as well)

I’m tired of hearing people complain about their work, and or jobs. I mean you spend at least 8 hours a day (for the normal people) and 12 hours (for the ambitious) at work. Couldn’t you like it a little more? If you are tired of the game, then get out of it and try a new one, one that you can be good at!

NaviStudio a leading Turkish Design Company has received a prestigious Web Site of the Day Award from the FWA.

NaviStudi has created one of the best websites ever says FWA for the site Egofoto.

CCTV and Adobe have partnered up to power their viewers with a great Flex App for the coverage of the Olympics.   Boasting a rich interface, social networking, live iptv streaming, plus a barrage of video selections Adobe has once again shown their presence on the Rich Internet Application scene. The application has been awarded “App of the Week” and will expose millions of people to the Flash / Flex Environment.

This small example was inspired by FlashMagazine’s tutorial on the Away3D engine. 3D is becoming the biggest rave in the flash world and has a bright future…Note that there are limitations on the flash player performance. Click on the image for the popup. Please be patient while it loads! (Too lazy to add a loader right now)

Links to resources in this example:
Away3D
JHT’S Planetary Pixel Emporium

Do you want to learn Flash? Better yet do you want to learn about the programming language Actionscript that is the impetus of most of the best flash designs in the world? Well here is a list of ways to learn Flash and Actionscript. Flash might look daunting to master for beginners but if you just grit your teeth and sink into it you will be amazed how quickly you can understand some of the basic concepts.

1. Some great tutorials for learning flash from the beginning to the advanced at Kirupa’s website. The list here is long and quite honestly very good for all levels. Do yourself a favor and check them out. You will see a mix of tutorials from animation to AS2 and AS3 and a whole hell of lot more. The team has really done a good job by bundling these tutes together for you all to learn from. Check out their forums as well.
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2. One great way to learn Flash is fire up the application and goto the inbuilt help file that ships with Flash. You can reference many books that Adobe has already selected for you with very useful and pertinent examples. If you read through the documentation you will surely be able to master the IDE (Internal Development Environment) quickly. What better way to learn than from the creators of the software?
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3. Also, be sure to look at the ActionScript 2.0 Migration document to see what functions and classes have been changed, moved, or removed. When changes exist between AS2 and AS3, this document often includes instructions for how you should change your approach.
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4. If you are seriously looking to learn flash then head over to Flashden and check out some of the stock flash files they have there. They are reasonably priced and by picking up just a couple of files you could learn a lot! Matter of fact some authors upload their files solely for learning purposes.
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5. You might want to learn from video tutorials – step by step instructions on how to code or animate in Flash Lynda.com offers many hours of video focused on Flash CS3 and ActionScript 2-3 for a low subscription price. Lee Brimlow’s site gotoAndLearn also offers free video tutorials about Flash.
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6. For the novice or advanced users there is no better way than to view the documentation at Adobes website. Be sure to check out Adobes Flash Developer Center and the Actionscript Technology Center. Or you could just goto the Adobe Developer Connection for a broader view of topics.
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7. All documentation available in the Flash CS3 product is available online on Adobe’s website, including many parts that may be downloaded in PDF form (if that’s your preference). For those that are new to programming, or maybe if you just need a bit of help learning about classes and objects, check out Getting Started with ActionScript in the documentation.
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8. Be sure to check out Senocular’s website and tutorial sections. They extremely helpful and they post a thread at the Kirupa forums called ActionScript 3.0 Tip of the Day.
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9. Another great way to learn Flash or Actionscript is by picking up a book on it. Here are some of the better titles out there.
   • Essential Actionscript 2
   • Essential Actionscript 3
   • Foundation Flash 8 for Actionscript
   • Foundation Actionscript for Flash CS3: Making things Move!
   • Actionscript 3 Cookbook
   • Actionscipt 2 Cookbook
   • Learning Actionscript 3
   • Object Orientated Actionscript
   • Actionscript 3 Bible
   • Foundation Actionscript 3.0 with Flash and Flex 2
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10. There are many forums out there to learn flash at. Google them or use your favorite search engine to find them.
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11. A great place to get free files is at FFiles Website. If you register with them you will be able to download free files from the website. They have many different categories of files for all levels and they are pretty darn useful!
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12. Use a flash decompiler to view other peoples code…Though it is not ethical to directly use anyone else’s code it is a great way to learn how professional build their websites. There are many out there so you can choose which one best suits you or which is the most accessible of the lot! Or ask someone for their code which you could learn from. If you asked me i most probably would be happy to help you on your way with small snippets of re-usable code.
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13. Lastly use a Java Bit Torrent Client such as Azureus to download torrents of your favorite flash books. Goto Extratorrent and type in Flash books and see what results you get. Just download that torrent and add it to you torrent Client to start the downloads. Better yet HERE is the direct link. You might also want to try Rapid Share Downloads and Repository.

Though there are alot more references for Flash on the web, these are the ones that come to my mind throughout my eternal search to learn more. Good Luck!

What is a fractal? The definition is: A mathematically generated pattern that is reproducible at any magnification or reduction.

Fractals are shapes or patterns that repeat at many levels. They are fascinating because they occur throughout the natural world, yet are rather counter-intuitive to programming environments because they involve infinite recursion. The leaf of a fern is a good example, where the fronds of the leaf are the shape of the leaf itself, and the subdivisions of the frond are the same shape again, and on, and on to beyond the limits of the human eye.

They are fun to play with in Flash because they are a quick way of producing complex, unpredictable results from very basic algorithms. The only trick is getting your head around the concept of infinite recursion, where a child and a parent are one and the same object. But as soon as you’ve mastered that, there’s nothing to it.

In terms of work however most clients dont like fractals as they are invariably complex and unpredictable…I have been reading alot about fractals lately and am would really like to share my inspiration with you.

- Zen Bullets

Here is an experiment of a fractal i just made in photoshop….I will continue to do so in Flash shortly..

The effect created above was done very easily using some filters and a basic shape. It truly is freedom of expression and the number or possibilities is infinite. Check the Mandlebrot Set for more inspiration on fractals and truly infinite algorithms! Here are some of the screens from MandleBrot.

Truly inspirational stuff! The mathematics on these babies is crazy. I would love to get running with this in the image processing classes with Flash sooner than later!!

1. Imagery work on 40 images.
2. Set up the actions and batch process.  Set the pace.
3. Include the [boxes] sidebar in OsCommerce.
4. Set up the stage and global variables in a new project.
5. Troubleshoot PhpMyAdmin
6. Practice my beloved ActionScript.

Sometimes you dont have to be a Top Shot Coder for people to respect you.   What you need to be respected is diligence, a very good work ethic, patience, and the drive to learn more.

The past few months have gotten me into alot of work with Art Galleries. Presently developing an E Commerce site for expatriate Pakistan’s to buy Art online. Also i have a sleu of Flash Art Gallery Sites coming up. The pics above are my favorite artists and paintings from different genres of Pakistan Artists.

I have to say that i have seen alot of talent in certain artists here in Pakistan while recently being exposed to the Art Community. The only thing that fades me is that the disciples who pose nude for these Master Artists are not that beautiful at all. I’ve heard of combinations of Uncle and niece having affairs with each other, the latter of which posing nude for the artist. Quite extraordinary i would have to say, but hey different strokes for different folks!!!

What inspires me about these artists is that they are self taught. Much like myself in my field of expertise, I find that the self taught masters/individuals are the most creative and most driven. Unfortunately i have seen alot of “copied” creativity in the Pakistani Art World and would really like to see some more originality. There is always room for new talent and its the Masters that have to push the youngsters to achieve higher standards. Unfortunately no one in the art community is willing to help another.

As a master of any art, business one should pass on his/her knowledge to others. Set your existing knowledge free and you shall receive more in the process. Why is everyone so scared to show the next person how they got that good??

Let me let you in on a little secret. If you dont work with your full heart then you will never achieve the quality that you so much desire. Its a “no brainer” if you want to become a MASTER of higher quality in your field you should open your mind and soul to this amazing sci – fi universe.

Powerful use of Actionscript and a well though out workflow on all levels -  design, functionality and of course A.S.!