Mar 14, 2010 Posted by arif in General, Reviews | 2 comments

A couple of new podcasts that I dabble in.

If you spend more than 15 minutes commuting and don’t listen to podcasts or any sort of audio material, gosh oh-gosh, you are missing an entire world of laughter and learning. Over the last week I have been hearing heard the fabulous story of an ordinary individual taking up fight against Racial killers of the Ku Klux Klan, the hilarious tale of a sleep-walker and his misadventures and the wonderful mystic words of Al Ghazzali from his ageless Alchemy of Happiness.

The audio explosion on the internet is as rich as the text and video material out there. What is it that interests you? What problem is it that’s bothering you? Just search for a podcast on that topic in iTunes or Yahoo podcasts and boom, you’ve got yourself a university of knowledge on that topic area. So much to listen but don’t have time to do so? You don’t need to take out time, just pop the mp3 files in your phone, plugin the earphones to your ear and hear it while coming to or leave from work. It couldn’t get easier.

I’m subscribed to about a 100 podcasts, however I listen to just a handful of those. I’ve blogged about some earlier podcasts that I dabble in here and here. In addition to those, below are a couple of others that I’m currently tuned into:

The Moth Story Telling Podcast
It’s Rated the number 1 Podcast for several weeks on the ITunes podcast directory, every story I’ve heard till date, connected with me at some level. The podcast contain true stories of individuals, which although is completed within 15 minutes, I’ve caught myself thinking, reflecting on the stories long after it’s passed through my ears. A podcast that I would heartily recommend.

Fora TV Audio of the Week Podcast
Fora TV, has an eclectic selection of lectures, panel discussions, debates on Political, Scientific, or any other topical subject (Thanks for the recommendation Sudeep). In the past, the episodes that I’ve heard on Fora TV and have found them to me greater insight to the workings of the world are:

Book Summary of Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

A panel Discussion on Would we be better off without Religion

Raj Patel, discussing his book, Stuffed and Starved. Why and how is half the world under-nourished and the other half Obese.

Finally, in addition to the above, I’m having simply a ball of a time, listening the audio rendition of Right Ho, Jeeves by P G Wodehouse, performed by B J Harrison of The Classic Tales Podcast. I’ve tried to pickup books by Wodehouse several times, but could never read past a few pages. But when B J Harrison gets behind the microphone to read out the exuberant expiditions of Wooster and Jeeves, not only do I look forward to each new episode but also find myself chuckling and giving whoops of excitement as I go of driving jolly well off to work.

If you are new to subscribing to Podcasts, here’s a great YouTube Video, that explains how it’s done.

Feb 25, 2010 Posted by Mohammed Ali in Reviews | 8 comments

6 Features of Manga Studio EX that make it better than Photoshop for Creating Comics

When I started drawing comics the workflow that I followed was:

* Sketching & Inking the images on paper
* Scanning the images
* Drawing Layout and lettering in Photoshop

After studying the advances made in the technology of Digital art (such as Wacom Tablets), I realized how much time is saved by drawing the comics digitally. One of the important points to consider when going digital is the software to use to draw the comics. Though photoshop/illustrator is the most common software, in this post I’d like highlight the features that make Manga Studio EX 4 a better software for creating Comics:

1. Comic Balloons

Comics are a silent art (unlike movies). Balloons are important elements to express variation in what the character is saying. Manga Studio comes with a rich library of Vector balloons that can be easily resized & edited. Each Balloon contains a text, and balloon tails can be extended from it, this makes editing very easy.

2. Perspective Ruler

This feature along is good enough to use Manga Studio for comics. At times drawing backgrounds can be a pain, especially if there’s a complex 2/3 point perspective involved. The perspective ruler makes it a breeze. 1,2,3 point perspective rulers are available that makes it easy for you to draw perspective lines for your backgrounds. With the ruler in place, as you draw on the screen, it automatically snaps your drawing to the auxiliarylines.

3. Tones

Tones in a comic help to set the mood of the story. Black and White tones are especially an important element in Manga Comics. Manga Studio comes with a large library of Tones, which can easily be added to any panel by simply dragging and dropping it in.

4. Organize Comic in Pages (Story Management)

Each Manga Studio Story file can contain several comic pages. This makes it very easy to oraganize your story and files on the hard disk.

5. Creating Panels

This is another great feature. Not only is there a library of ready panels to use. it’s easy to create your own custom panels by varying the size & thickness of the panel borders.

6. Importing 3D Materials

Manga Studio allows a user to import and rotate 3D files. This can work as a great great hack for creating backgrounds! One way is to create a background using Google Sketchup, and import the file as a 3D material. Then you can either use this background or trace over it to whatever level of detail it suits you.

Want to get the best of both worlds? (Manga Studio + Photoshop)

Use the Export feature

Though Manga Studio is better than Photoshop for drawing comics in many ways, one aspect where it falls short is when it comes to coloring. So if you want to draw your comics in Manga Studio and color them in Photoshop, Manga Studio allows you to export your black and white comic page in PSD format maintaing all layers including text!

Ever since I’ve started using Manga Studio I’ve not looked back.   If you’re a comic artist, I recommend you give it a try. A Trial version can be downloaded here for free.

Dec 24, 2009 Posted by arif in Reviews | 15 comments

A short Review of the 9 Personality Development Books I’ve read in 2009

Reading…it’s one of the the greatest, most pleasurable, highly blissful indulgences that this ephemeral existence has to offer. Other than Coffee (and Chocolate ofcourse). Sometime back I gave myself a schedule to spend an hour reading everyday. About the same time I began tracking which books I was reading at the All Consuming website and now I parallely do it at Good Reads website as well. I managed to write a couple of reviews of a few books at the Arif & Ali blog. I’ve hardly done justice to some of the fantastic material that I ‘ve covered. I’ve scanned through my list and hello, I’ve almost crossed 50 books since I’ve started tracking them. I’ve not read them all completely. But certainly enough to have a fair idea of what the book contains and whether would it be worth my while to complete it or not. (On that note, one of the best standards I have set for myself is giving myself permission to skip sections of a book or even leaving it incomplete). As I sit here approaching the cusp of 2009, I’ll be posting a series of posts giving a short review of the books I’ve covered in the last year or so. The first in the series of posts covers the Personality Development books I’ve read.

Personality Deveopment:

Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, Influencer
How do you appraise a fellow employee on his poor work performance effectively? Or how do you tell your boss that he’s not being reasonable in his deadlines that he’s giving? In a personal setting how do you tell a colleague the he’s got Body Odour and Personal Hygiene issues? Crucial Conversations teaches how to step up to such conversations that run high on emotions, have high stakes and conflicting opinions. Crucial Confrontations, teaches you to address failed commitments and Influencer promises you the ability to influence anybody to do anything 99% of the time.

Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations were excellent reads. Influencer fell short of my expectations but nonetheless I am glad I covered it. If you feel you could brush up on your conversational skills, go ahead and give these books a try.

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway
With over 2 million copies sold, this book has it’s place reserved in the classics shelf. Who isn’t afraid? If you say you’re not, then buddy you’re not trying hard enough to stretch out of your comfort zones. I loved certain sections of the book and specially the first chapter which provided the insight that you are always afraid for one and ONLY one reason…ie You’ll not be able to handle it. ie You feel you’ll not be able to handle the situation/scenario that your are scared of . Or in other words you’ll not be in control. Think about it. It’s so true. Be it fear of public speaking or fear to confront an individual on something sensitive, if you’re scared it’s because you’ll feel that you may no longer will be in control of the situation. The best part is, simple Awareness of this is half the battle won. So now that you know why you’re scared, what can you do about it? Absolutely nothing. That’s the whole point, you’ve got to “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway”. However that said, there are many tips and tricks to help you deal with your fears on your way to growth.

When I say No I feel Guilty
The best assertiveness training book I’ve come across. Written sometime in the 70′s this book still rings true today. The only high-irritant that I have with this book is that it takes the theory that you are the ultimate judge of what’s right and what’s wrong way too far. So far that it towards the end it concludes that even nudist camps are okay, as long as you’re okay about it. Having that said, it does having amazing 1, 2, 3 step by step techniques to help you stand up to situations that you would otherwise slink away from. Check out the Bill of Assertive Rights that the book begins with:

A BILL OF ASSERTIVE RIGHTS

I.   You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.

II.   You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.

III.   You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people’s problems.

IV : You have the right to change your mind.

V :  You have the right to make mistakes — and be responsible for them.

VI : You have the right to say, “I don’t know,”

VII : You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.

VIII: You have the right to be  illogical in making decisions.

IX:   You have the right to say, “I don’t understand”

X:   You have the right to say, “I don’t care.”

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY NO, WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY.

The Power of Full Engagement
When are you fully engaged towards a task? It’s when your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy reservoirs are at it’s maximum. The Power of Full Engagement, guides you in recognising which energy reservoir is specifically below it’s optimal potential and what routines can you incorporate to ensure that you are running on full tank as much as possible, as far as possible.

50 Prosperity Classics
All of Tom Butler Bowden books are a Must Read. 50 Prosperity Classics is a summary of 50 books that show how to:
1. Attract Wealth,
2. Create Wealth,
3. Manage Wealth,
4. Finally…how to share it.

And in Tom’s inimitable style, very often the summary of the book covered explains the content better than the Author himself. I read this book cover to cover and enjoyed reading the summary of almost each and every book that he listed. The few books from which a couple of lessons that still linger in my memory are:

- James Allen, The Path to Propertiy
- Bill Gates, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
- Corad Hilton, Be My Guest
- Muhammad Yunus Banker to the Poor

See the entire list of the books he covers here.

The War of Art
I have a separate blog post on the War of Art here. Nothing’s changed of my opinion. It really does give Procrastination a solid kick in it’s butt.   I so LOVE this book. And as I’ve said earlier, the audio book is even better. If I could I would gift each of my blog readers a copy of this audio book. But because I’m such a stingy scrooge I won’t be doing that. So do go ahead and purchase the audio book. If not all of it, go ahead and purchase just part 1, it’s currently retailing at a discount of $7.49

Mastery
Mastery has been lying in my shelf for over a year but didn’t get round to completing it till just last week. It’s just what I needed to get my blog writing and exercise schedule back on track. Although it has a cheesy subtitle “The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment”, George Leonard does a brilliant job explaining how we’re now living in such a “excitement” based society. That every moment has to be simply Rapturous, or it’s not good-enough. All the advertising that we’re pounded with (pictures of the cake just being baked, a couple just moving into their apartment, driving out that brand new car) are setting for us that same unrealistic standard. The key out of the trap is “loving the plateau”. ie Being aware of where you stand in your pursuit (writing and fitness in my case) and realising that success comes after long periods of perfecting the same routine over and over again. I received quite a few take backs from this book. If you do read it, look out for the different personality traits that George points out (the Beginner, the Dabbler, the Hacker and the Master) and see where you fit in.

Hopefully if I get round to it, in future posts, I’ll be listing out the books with summaries that I’ve completed in the following genre’s:
- Spirituality
- Economy
- Autobiography
- Social Change
- and Fiction

Till then, take care and keep smiling. :-)

Nov 26, 2009 Posted by arif in General, Reviews | 1 comment

In Praise of Slowness

I’m currently hearing this great podcast by Carl Honore on his book, In Praise of Slowness. He attacks our addiction that we have for speed and doing everything so swiftly, that even instant-gratification feels too slow. He addresses two key questions, How did we get here and what is it that we can do to slow down. Slow down not in the sense of replacing the Cult of Speed with the Cult of Slow, but more in the Cult of living life more fully and wholly. You can download the audio of the podcast here.

Oct 27, 2009 Posted by arif in Reviews, Spirituality | 1 comment

A few Quotes from Tuesday’s with Morrie

I read this bestseller quite some time back, after Ali informed me that it’s audiobook has been quite a hit on iTunes. Although not a spiritual classic and not a book that I would strongly recommend, a part of me is glad that I have completed it. Below are a sprinkling of quotes from the book that I placed in my Intention Journal. I felt like sharing them with you.

“When you learn how to die, you learn how to live”

“Well the truth is if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time-then you might not be as ambitious as you are.”

“The things you spend so much time on-all this work you do-might not seem as important. You might have to make room for some more spititual things.”

Spiritual things?

“You hate that word, don’t you? ‘Spiritual.’ You think it’s touchy-feely stuff.”

“Mitch,” he said, laughing along, “even I don’t know what ‘spiritual development’ really means. But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”