The World As I See It !

I gave a presentation on User Experience, lately . Here is the slidshow

Let me know what you guys think

 

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How do you feel to be among the chosen 40 in a four million membered developer community codeproject.com ? In one word, elated. Having your name beside legends like Michael Dunn, Christian Graus, Nishant Sivakumar, Colin Angus Mackay, Marc Clifton, DavidCrow and others is an honour for a life time.  

Check Quartz.(Alias) at Hall of Fame

When I saw the email, that I was awarded as Code Project Most Valuable Professional (MVP), I was surprised and happy at the same time. The year 2007 flashed by my eyes. All that, I learned and taught, the knowledge I gathered and shared, the articles, I... more

So finally I gave the long awaited Silverlight Presentation

Its time for silverlight , Lots of discussion, Everybody liked it, I thought they will be overwhelmed and I will get a chance to start working on some "cutting edge" and "compelling" Silverlight projects. Not that much impressed ! Check the Slide Show

 

Here is the gist

Slide 1: Microsoft Silverlight An Introduction Rajesh Lal

Slide 2: What is Silverlight? Technology Overview Architecture Silverlight & Flash Silverlight Media Business Model Creating a Silverlight application

Slide 3: What is Silverlight? Definition Why it’s time for Silverlight Silverlight Background Difference... more

Funny gem of a collection !

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)

6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.

7. Be more or less specific.

8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unecessary.

9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

10. No sentence fragments.

11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.

12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

14. One should NEVER generalize.

15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

17.... more

Milton Caniff, the creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon, once said "a comic strip artist is like the director, the producer and the actor of his own stage play. " Using a similar analogy, Ernie Bushmiller was the architect, th e surveyor, and the building contractor for his own construction project.

 

Nancy was carefully designed to stand out clearly on the newspaper page and to be easily read and understood. Every line and letter had a specific purpose, and the composition of each panel was balanced and pleasing to the eye. The total effect was a masterfully crafted product that delivered its message with economy and precision. Bushmiller's creation served its function like a Shaker chair.

Ernie worked on an unconventional but regular... more

I stumbled across this recently , loved it

“No Tears In The Writer, No Tears In The Reader.” by Robert Frost.

 The best writer’s feel passion about what they are writing. If the passion is not present, the emotion is not there. If the emotion is there, forget trying to please a reader because they will not be compelled to read any more of your stuff. You must believe in what you write, you must feel what you write, you must know what you write. If you do not, your readers will know.

 

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Basic Instructions, Part 1

Several months ago I clicked on a web link that led me to a comic called Basic Instructions, by Scott Meyer. I thought, “Damn, this is good.” So I sent him my compliments via e-mail.

Scott replied, expressing deep suspicion that I was really the Dilbert cartoonist and not some a-hole yanking his chain. I thought, “Damn, he’s cynical and paranoid. He’s a natural cartoonist.”

Somehow I convinced him I was real. Over the course of the next few months I offered him some tips for getting syndicated in newspapers. It dawned on me that my blog readers might want to follow that conversation, like a reality show, and see if my sage advice can help a talented unknown hit the big time.

You can help. Over the next month or more, with Scott’s permission, I’ll give you updates showing my advice and his responses. Your comments will guide us. When his work gets to the point where I think he should... more

• 1. Place yourself in the background.
• 2. Write in a way that comes naturally.
• 3. Work from a suitable design.
• 4. Write with nouns and verbs.
• 5. Revise and Rewrite.
• 6. Do not overwrite.
• 7. Do not overstate.
• 8. Avoid the use of qualifiers.
• 9. Do not affect a breezy manner.
• 10. Use orthodox spelling.
• 11. Do not explain too much.
• 12. Do not construct awkward adverbs.
• 13. Make sure the reader knows who is speaking.
• 14. Avoid fancy words.
• 15. Do not use dialect unless your ear is good.
• 16. Be Clear.
• 17. Do not inject opinion.
• 18. Use figures of speech sparingly.
• 19. Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity.
• 20. Avoid foreign languages.
• 21. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.

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People often ask me how I come up with ideas. The fast answer is I’m just wired that way. But there’s also a large element of technique that I can teach you.

In some long-ago post, I described how I filter ideas with my body more than my mind. Internally, it feels like a slot machine with the little symbols changing in the three windows until some combination of three makes me literally “feel” something – a laugh, a wince, an ah-ha, whatever. It’s the ideas you can feel in your body that will engage others.

Once I have a topic that makes me feel something, I imagine myself as the reader and ask what my thought pattern would be on this topic. I start my writing process by acknowledging the most common view on the topic. And then I violate it. It’s the violating that makes it fun. The pattern looks like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, taupe.

I’ll give you an example from today. I saw an article in Time magazine about General Petraeus, the top... more

Writing Funny

Today I will teach you how to write funny. I will be referring to my earlier post about the world’s tallest man. Read that one first, two posts below, if you haven’t already.

Picking a Topic
-------------------

The topic does half of your work. I look for topics that have at least one of the essential elements of humor:

Clever
Cute
Bizarre
Cruel
Naughty
Recognizable

In order for something to be funny, it has to have at least two of the six elements of humor. A story about a 7-foot 9-inch Mongolian herdsman marrying a smallish woman is bizarre all by itself. In the humor context, bizarre simply means two things you wouldn’t normally find together.

Notice how many of the humor elements I worked into my post about the tall herdsman:

Clever: Retrieving an iPod in a clever way, and the salmon in a canoe analogy

Cruel: Shish Kabob accident with his wife

Bizarre:... more