World Community Grid

World Community Grid is a non-profit organization started at the end of 2004. Its goal is to create the largest computer gathering that benefit humanitarian projects.

We know that scientific researchers are financially costly and they need a lot of time to complete. World Community Grid save money and time by allowing volunteers to create a huge computer network which for example can complete a computer research and reduce the period of completion from 10 years to one year or less.

Its idea is based on the contribution of individuals, to create a power like supercomputer by installing a program on a computer connected to the Internet whether the computer was a PC or laptop. The program divides the tasks on the registered computers so that they do researches or part of it individually and then sends it to the assembly center to compare and verify the result. The program support Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Simple interface

My Preferences

The program has default settings and you can change your settings. For example: You can select the consumption rate of RAM, space, and CPU. You can choose to do the work on the idle status. During my experience on the first month of using the program, I’ve found that the best result is to choose the lowest percentage of the processor (10%) and make the program run all the time; or choose 40% to 50% and make the program only works on idle status. I found that more than 50% makes the processor act like if its having a fever :) and my computer fan run all the time (Dell XPS M1530 with 2 Core Duo processor).

The main sponsor of the World Community Grid is IBM. The technology is available to the public non-profit organizations to help them to use in humanitarian research that make our world a better place. There are more than 577,000 registered users. Many completed researchers in a number of areas, including the fight AIDS, cancer, childhood cancer, malaria researches. All of these research are public domain and available to all the global non-profit research community. 

To join the team I created (Qatif) please register through this link.

The Shootout in Tarut and Dareen

Between the alleys of the old neighborhood

I was lucky when Faisal caught me in front of my house and told me that some of Jarodiah Photography Group members are going for a shootout in Tarut Island and Dareen, Saudi Arabia. The next day, July the 8th, I borrowed a Canon 550D T2i from my niece :) and a Canon lens, 24-105mm from my friend Faisal (Because I left my equipments in the U.S.)

Both the boys and the girls went, 14 women and 11 men. I believe the temperature was around +35c, ~100F, with high humidity which is what killed us :O


Here are some of my shots:)

silhouette

Close up of the same silhouette

A newly built as an old traditional house

I had a great time. I wish the weather was better though ;)


Full coverage of the Shootout

Update: My Personal Website

As some of you might know that I have been working on my personal website. I have managed to almost finish it. I have upload it to the GIT server, Here is the link.

Programs I used: Adobe Dreamweaver, Visual Light Box, WOW Slider.

I designed the header, the background (fixed on the pages), and spry menu bar. It's based on Dreamweaver template, but modified it to fit my need.  

The Index Page: for the slide show in the main page I used WOW Slider which is cool and easy programs to use, free and paid version.
 

The About Page: little info about me :)

The Galleries Page: where the photo is a link to a specific galley.

I used Visual Light Box to create my gallery (pretty easy to use). Each gallery view the image using "jquery" java script viewer.

 

The Contact Page: made the contact form in Adobe Dreamweaver, and used a php mail form page. I though It will be better for me to also list Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook accounts on the contact page.

What I would do next? 
- Add more contents (photos, particularly).
- Redesign the blog to fit with the page design.
- Find better place for Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook links.
- And if I got creative, I might change the look of the whole site :P

QR Codes for Designers

The new creative way to connect real life to the digital world is by using QR code (short for Quick Response) where you can scan the tags from your mobile phone for quick access to URL, websites, videos, reviews, phone numbers, addresses, an iPhone app and much more.

Designers and whoever publish stuff to the public such as for advertising, marketing or campaigns, can differently use and benefit from it. I have seen QR-Codes, the once that look like this

on ads, posters, business card, flyers, and even products (my facial wash). You can make yours from here.

Microsoft has come with a neat QR code system called Microsoft Tag.

The cool thing about Microsoft Tag is that its colored and you can manipulate it, where you can customize it with personal background or even make it as a picture.

After you register on their website, set your categories and then go to the Tag Manager.

Hit Create a Tag

Enter the needed information. Under the tag type you could choose URL, App Download, Free Text, vCard, or Dialer.

You could also set an end date to the tag, this is useful for event ads and such on.

After you hit Save, you'll go back to the Tag Manager, click the render icon of the tag you created to created and choose the design on the tag.

You could choose file type and size. Custom is the option where you can manipulate the background of the tag. Like this:

If you choose custom, make sure the background color don't interfere with the tag color, Watch this video to understand what I mean.

This is Plain tag:

You could try mine ;), but first, you need to download the app from here.

Team Work - Website Design

I have been working with seven classmates to design a website. The website called Threvs and represent photographers, web designers, graphic designers, and print work (small business website).

Each member of the business is listed under his/her specialties. They only show some personal information, contact information and small portfolio (gallery) of their work.

My Role

My role was to take charge of the customer service representation, which I did, even though I need to improve it :0 I then designed the home page (index) which allow my team to use it and design their assigned pages. I also made the spry menu bar using Adobe Dreamweaver.

The customer requested to use different color schemes for each page (background and spry menu bar). This was a problem because we had the same CSS file that was used for the index page and since we can't use the same CSS for multiple different colored pages, I decided to add all the CSS code to the main code of each page, instead of having it as a separate file.

Working on a team/client is a great experience, it make you feel like working in a real job. I don't think I had any problem keeping in touch with the clients. The only thing that should have been better is dividing the work, but since we didn't know each other and didn't know who is best in what, it payed fine in the end.


We divided the work as fallowing:

Logo/Header | Emily & Cale

Content | Brent
CSR | Salman
Images/Photography | creating/shooting images or acquiring copyright free existing images Christina & Kimi
Site Architecture | April & Cale


We started by fallowing two steps:

Phase 1

1. Project Time Line with due dates and responsible party
2. Client Interview & Research
3. Site Map - computer generated for entire site
4. Site Special Feature List | total of 8, you need to choose 6 more in addition to CSS and Twitter account with custom background that matches your site design (ie: css large background, flash slideshow, anchor links, submit form)

Phase 2

1. Production Story Board | One for home page (use PDF on Angel for Index page)
2. Wireframe Sketches | one page for each second tier navigation (use printable PDF pages from blog link for the 4 secondary pages)
3. Upload Final site to the psuwebdesigners.com class website (see designated folder under Spring 2011)

Behind the Exhibition Poster

I actually made this poster in 2010 for my GIT 341, Digital File Preparation class taught by Christel Benson. I new I'll end up using it ;) The assignment was to design a poster.

If I have a lack of inspiration, I go to search on Google Images just to look at some examples which are related to my topic or whatever I want to design. 

This design caught my eyes, which trigger me to come up with my exhibition  poster design. 

I mainly liked the layout of the images. I just noticed that I almost have the same color schemes, which I actually didn't intend in using. I used it even though I wasn't aware of it. Then, I decided to add something that will represent photography more than the pictures (which is me holding the camera). I used InDesign to layout everything. The layout of the photos, the camera man, and the vector brush in the background are all done by Photoshop.

The photo layout ended up as one picture and the camera man with the vector brush as another picture. I used two fonts, Bauhaus93and Vivaldii. The poster size was 18 by 23 inches.

Customizing Your Blogger Blog

There are so may ways to customize your blog, but  this the easy way is by the using Template Designer settings under your Design setting.

After you choose you template ( mine is Watermark), there are more than 15 customizable templates.

I selected the layout the I liked. You can choose the number of columns/sidebars you want. 

Here you can adjust the width of the bars and the width entire blog.

This is when it become more complicated. In the advance mode you can change the font type, color and size, which might be tricky, because you want to choose something that fit with your overall design.

 

This is my old design.

 

This is after I adjust the width of the blog and the width of the sidebar from the Adjust Width menu.

 After applying a background image from the Background menu. This might be tricky because, you may need to change the color of the text just to be readable against the background.

Another template called Ethereal which I might end up using whenever I have my content ready.

I don't think I'm ready to change many things in my blog since I don't have my contents ready to fill my blog and pages, but I have made some small changes and have tried several things just to show you how you can customize your blog.

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