shakeelnaim » General

New Job

SuperShaka — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:24:16 +0000

Wow! It’s been almost 9 months since I last posted. I am ashamed.
Basically, last year was a really bad year overall. The deteriorating economy affected many people, including me. In order to avoid redundancies and struggling with financial issues, my employer had introduced pay cuts in April. Unfortunately, this did not help and by the end of November, the company went into insolvency and I became unemployed.
Thankfully I had already been for a job interview prior to this and had been informally accepted for a new job (many thanks to Ian for this).The only caveat was that the job was not for web developer which I preferred and it was based in Glasgow and would mean relocating back to Scotland …
After becoming unemployed, I searched for suitable jobs locally for the first few weeks, but it soon became apparent that with the fragile economic climate, there weren’t that many jobs within reasonable distance. With no income and no redundancy pay to support me, my hand was forced and I accepted the Glasgow job offer.
I moved in with family and started the new job in the new year. Other than my clothes and a few essential items, all my remaining belongings are boxed up and stored away which, at times, feels like I’m staying in a hotel. However I’m grateful to the family for putting up with me and for having a full paid job. As I said, it’s a departure from what I was doing before so time will tell how I get on.
In the meantime, I hope to get back in to blogging, creating and finishing the photo blog site which I’ve been intending to do for over a year now and finally to be more contributing to the DigitalOutbox tech podcasting website.
I can’t imagine anyone reading this blog anymore (can’t blame you to be honest) but hopefully with frequent content, I might attract some readers soon. Ciao for now.

An Update

SuperShaka — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:21:25 +0000

It’s been a while since I last posted something, so felt that I needed to add an update.
Past few weeks have been very busy, with work, launch of DigitalOutbox and preparing and recording the podcasts. You might have also noticed that the website is sporting a fresh new look! After the launching DigitalOutbox, I felt the blog looked too plain and didn’t really represent my vision, so I spent some time finding a new theme and then customising it to suit my needs. It’s still not 100% the way I’d like it and I will be making tweaks here and there over the coming months.

On top of all this, I’ve been getting really frustrated by not having an elegant way for displaying my photographs. I feel I’m not good enough to have a professional looking online portfolio as I’m not a photographer by profession, but I would still like to present my photos in a professional manner, separate from this blog. I don’t have the time or the desire to build a website from scratch so the other option is to use a photoblogging tool.

I’ve been trying out Pixelpost for a few months, but not really gotten anywhere due to various reasons. It’s a nice enough tool with some really nice themes available, but I haven’t yet found a theme that impresses me overall. One option is to pick the themes that have features that I like and then create my own customised theme. This is not something I’m looking forward to doing due to lack of spare time.
Another option is to use Wordpress and use one of the numerous photoblog themes. I’m not too sure about this option as I don’t want the extra burden of adding posts, I just want to be able to upload photos and present them in a funky way with easy to use navigation.

So in the meantime I have added a Photos page and using a really cool AJAX enabled plugin, Slickr Gallery, which streams my photos from my Flickr page and displays the sets as albums. It looks pretty nice and is easy to use.
Recently I have discovered another possible option, SlideShowPro, which I’m testing out right now. At the moment it’s looking very promising and could end up being the weapon of choice. The only caveat is that it’s just a tool for displaying photos and doesn’t provide the complete solution of a website with themes and plugins, so I will have to use it in combination with Pixelpost or Wordpress.
Here’s an example of how it can be customised to suit your website design and colour scheme. This is using RSS to pull the latest photos from my Flickr page.

DigitalOutbox – all things digital

SuperShaka — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:25:28 +0000

For the past few weeks, my friend Ian and I, have been working on a little project called DigitalOutbox. We’ve always had a huge interest in the latest technology, gadgets, games and computing, so we though it’s about time we made something of it and put ourselves to the test.

We will be producing weekly podcasts covering the latest tech news, gadgets, games and all things digital. The podcasts will be available to download and stream directly from our new website – DigitalOutbox. You can subscribe to the blog posts and the podcasts, directly from our website. Additionally, you can also subscribe to the podcasts, directly from within iTunes. The podcast will be available as a standard podcast and an enhanced podcast which will include chapters and album art. Each podcast will be published accompanied with shownotes detailing the topics covered and also include website links where relevant.

Of course there are plenty of podcasts out there covering the exact same subject matter, some with extremely high production standards. We both felt that what was lacking was a UK focus and the presentation more laid back and easier for the listener to digest. We want our style to be more approachable and easier for all listeners to understand, with less techno jargon and more relevancy to what would interest most folks rather than only focusing on the technically minded. All of this is presented with some friendly banter and a few laughs to entertain, delight and educate. Our intention is to eventually introduce vidcasts and possibly also video reviews of gadgets and games. We also hope to produce video tutorials and screencasts covering all manner of things, in the very near future.

It is a challenging project for both of us in terms of experience, obviously, and also time and commitment towards our careers and family life. We have never done anything like this before and this will definitely be noticeable in our first podcast – lots of “erm’s”, nervous laughs and occasional pauses. We will endeavor to make your listening experience as pleasant as we can and promise to do better as we get more practice and become more confident. We welcome and encourage all feedback, comments and suggestions. If you think there are things we are doing wrong, tell us! If there are things that we do or say that you like, brilliant! Let us know!

A new year, a new blog

SuperShaka — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:00:55 +0000

Well, after a couple of years since giving up my previous blog, I have decided to start a new one.

During this period a lot has changed – I find less and less time to play computer games; I have taken up amateur photography and my interest in photo editing and graphic design has grown immensely. This is probably the main reason that I have started this blog as I’d like to have an elegant online portfolio to display some of work, with a simple blog front-end.

The blog is using the ever popular Wordpress. Thanks go to Ian for letting me exploit his vast blogging experience to help with the set up.
The photo blog is using PixelPost app and will be populated over the next few days.

I’m very excited about this project and hope that I can produce something that will encourage me to learn more about photography and digital imaging and also provide a personalised online digital portfolio to present my work.

Happy New Year.