I've been preparing a blog design for my site [link] and it is almost ready. Here is the teaser for the first blogpost : [link] I would love to have some beta testers for getting quality feedback on my site. Who all are up for this ?

Iconsutra.com

Okay guys, first of all a big sorry for being inactive here. I was busy with making a site of my own. It will be some time before I upload the original one, in the meanwhile to show my status, this is the idea I came up with. You can go here to find a present for you guys dead on arrival. With each progress I make, I will mend a crack in the gift and finally when I am done you will see it in its all glory For the extra curious / impatient , there is something hidden in the barcode. Crack it and also if someone is there on  Twitter | Dribbble | Forrst , join me Oh yeah,  tweet this and spread the love if you like it !

Log of almost all the things I saw/listened/read/used this vacation. Neither a good critic nor good at rating, but I love logging and for some , I may be the last one on earth to watch/use it so please bear with me. If you are bored, pick one of those rated 2 or above to sample. Don't waste precious time of your life seeing/watching/experiencing crap.

Legend

Rating is in 3. In extreme rare cases, it goes for a zero/four, it will be something remarkable in either case.

☆☆☆ : Escape
★☆☆: Poor
★★☆ : Likeable
★★★ : Awesome
★★★★ : Masterpiece

Movies

[Kor] Chugyeogja aka The Chaser : ★★☆
[Kor] Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance : ★★☆
[Eng] Kill Bill Vol. 1 : ★★★
[Tam] Tamil Padam : ★★☆
[Ger] Run Lola Run : ★★★
[Tel] Magadheera : ★★★
[Spa] Pan's Labyrinth : ★★★
[Hin] Kaminey : ‚★★★
[Tam] Nadodigal : ★★☆
[Eng] Iron Giant : Pending
[Eng] May : ★☆☆
[Eng] Ice Age 3 : ★★☆
[Eng] The Fall : Pending
[Jap] Ghost in the Shell : Pending
[Fre] Girl with the Dragon Tattoo : Pending
[Eng] Zombieland : ★★★
[Eng] Toy Story : ★★★
[Eng] Toy Story 2 : ★★★
[Tel] Kick : ★☆☆
[Tel] Vikramarkudu : ★★☆



Music

[Blues] Andari Banduvaya : ★★☆
[Classical] Shankarabharanam : ★★★★
[Psytrance] Blumenkraft : ★★☆
[] The Boy Who Knew Too Much : ★★☆
[Hip-hop] Gorillaz : ★★★
[Trance] Imagine : Pending
[Dance Hall] Imperial Blaze : Pending
[Electronic] Into the Great Wide and Yonder : Pending
[Electronic] Labyrinth : ★★★
[Psytrance] The Legend of the Black Shawarma : ★★★
[Electronic] Like Drawing Blood : ★★☆
[Blues] Malarvaadi Arts Club : ★★★
[Rock] Mutemath : ★★☆
[Electronic] Shango : ★★★
[Nordic] Trä : ★★☆
[Blues] Singam : ★★☆
[Psytrance] Vicious Delicious : ★★★
[Alternative] 10,000 Days : ★★★
[Electronic] Ocean Eyes : Pending
[Blues] Aridhu Aridhu : ★★★
[Ghazal] Colonial Cousins : ★★★
[Ambient] The Sunrise Projector : Pending
[???] Silsila : ☆☆☆

Books

GTD : ★★★
M. Krishnan Nayar's Essays : ★★★
Learn C on the Mac : ★★☆
100 Years of Solitude : Pending
Fountainhead : Pending

Apps

Appzapper : ★★★
Bodega : ★★☆
Cloud : ★★★
Safari 5 : ★★☆
Adium : ★★★
Live View Screencaster : ★★★
Pixelmator : ★★☆
Magic Prefs : ★★★
Textmate : ★★★
Things : ★★★
xScope : ★★★
Itsy : ★☆☆
Photoshop CS5 : ★★★
Tweetie : ★★☆
Bowtie : ★★★
Twitterific : ★★☆
Heltweetica : ★☆☆
Candybar : ★★★
Netnewswire : ★★★
Transmission : ‚★★★
Fluid : ★★★

Sites/Services

Evernote : ★★★
Instapaper : ★★★
Grooveshark : ★★★
Dropbox : ★★★★

Games

Spelunky : Pending completion
Machinarium : ★★★

Series

Planet Earth : ★★★★
Death Note : ★★★

As you can see, I am really falling behind reading books here, need to catch up. And after completing this, it turns out that almost all are rated 2-3. Oh well, so in that case, as your time allows, see those rated 3 and after then move on to 2. And be sure to recommend me some media/stuff, you found really interesting.

Come Back
Its been almost a year since I posted anything here on deviantART. I was devoting this year for my academics. The first wave of exams are now over and a few more to go. The last examination day is April 25 and afterwards, I will be making the best use of my time.

Meanwhile
In the meantime I got deeply addicted to books and pixel art. If you were following me on twitter, you might already know that a new iconpack is in the making. As there were truckloads of portions I had to cover, I had to sit late into the night and I had to do something to entertain me. Enter Pixelart. As it had a short canvas I only had to sit for a few minutes in multiple sittings for making an icon and it kept me going.

Boolean Icons
Boolean, is the new expanding iconpack in the making. It will solely contain 16^2 pixel icons. It is growing in the sense that I will be updating it as I forge more icons. I will be using a versioning system that ticks 0.1 for every 10 icons I make. So currently it is Boolean 0.5. And it will be released once it is Boolean 1.0

Geekery
I found out that Physics (something which I had been neglecting till now ) is something everyone should rote learn. If you get the real meaning of things, there is nothing as elegant as Physics. And learned about a lot of great authors like Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Kurt Vonnegut, Sergei Lukyanenko, Ayn Rand and others. Well, I know you fellow deviants would be knowing them before hand, but in my place, they are not known outside the circle of nerds. And a few other things that interested me lately :

Tetris Effect
Earworm
iPhone games by Donut Games
Lifecycle of mysterious Manjuu : A comic by Derek Yu
New Colour scheme in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Okay, a few more days of fight and I am all yours.

Academics is keeping me busy and away from the pixel territory but I will be back soon.I just found some time to share these : If you are into Twitter. Paulo Coelho is the next person to follow. Author of many brilliant titles, real gems pour out of this man's twitter mouth. Catch 'em all at : [link]
And if you like UI/UX designs, be sure to check :

Parthiban Mohanraj
Really takes care of the pixels;to the last one. One of the most promising icon designers out there.

Rundown on the happenings in this vacation:

Social Activities

Between the last week of March and first week of April, visited Dubai with my family as a vacation trip. The place is jam packed with buildings , cars and activity. My days followed a Shop-Eat Cycle and it became somewhat boring and repetitive and was eager to return home. My dad, has started a new studio : Joel Cine Labs and there are more computers there to do my stuffs in. But the bad thing is it is located far from my home, so will have to stick with my old and trustworthy PC
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Exam Results

The CBSE +2 Results were out and managed to get 440/500 . Now planning to set aside this year for getting into IIT. Need to work hard.

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Studio

Stuck on lot of tutorials and movies downloaded from the net. Learning CSS via Lynda and WB Skinning via HGUI . Also discovered the theming-friendly Xion . Lately been visiting lots of portfolios and was flabbergasted on the details, artists put into those, like : Hybridworks Also learned that there is a new Yoritsuki icons in the making . All these are encouraging me to work on an All-in-One bundle, consisting of an icons, wall and skins for WB,Xion,iPhone and FF. The Wacom icons and a pattern pack is currently in the making and hope to release them quick enough.
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Media



Watched some 20+ movies and striking ones where : Athadu , Ratatouille , Lucky Number Slevin WALL E, Iron Man and Pulp Fiction. Also, be sure to check out the awesome images from Avatar : [link] Its the screenies from the game for XBOX 360, but it will not be long till we see some original footage from the film itself.



Oy! (2009) - YSR
Thaalam - Job Kurian, Charan & Yakzon
Hello Hello - Midival Punditz
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For those guys, who are hearing my there is a place where I talk less - the Twitter. Now on, will be tweeting about all the interesting stuffs I come across : [link]

and after all those , me retiring to bed

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Communities

Style sans Substance and the style element too not well polished. With no good story involved the film's plot jumps from one event to another in which Sagar gets involved.The film's progression is reminiscent of Amal's previous venture Big B in many places, to name : the shots, ramping and some events. All in all, the film didn't impress me

My vacation just started. After sleepless nights and hours of study, back! Board Exams are over and now need to be more active. Gonna bring my computer back from ma dad's workplace and gotta screw her day and night A wallpack is sittin midway.
Got myself an iPhone and will be friggin' her too... Expect an iconpack soon.
And like icing on the cake, Sagar alias Jacky Reloaded releasing 'morrow. Gotta watch the First Day - First Show and will come up with the review asap....
P.S : For the clueless read about Sagar alias Jacky here : [link]

Indian Government has decided to make a symbol for their currency and it is upto us to design the logo.
Check out the guidelines here : [link]

Just got a subscription by participating in the Epic Logo contest. However utilizing it :
Here's a feature:
Qure Dock Icons Spin-Off
:thumb107630304:


by one of my friends...
and here is a little sneak peek of one of his upcoming icon pack :


By the way, just saw Ghajini[Hindi] and Villu[Tamil]. Ghajini is more like a dubbed version of the Tamil and Villu totally spiced up the Hindi version. Try saving your money by sticking to the originals.

We Unite

Today, I started a new community called Malayalees  here on deviantART to unite all the malayalees (occupants of <a href="[link]":>Kerala) spread apart across dA . Membership is limited only to pure malayalees , so if I have missed any one out there, please inform others go, check out the skillz of we the Malayalees and for my watchers, I am currently making a vector car wallpack named "Mechanika" Its 20% done

After a month's inactivity, back with 3 new deviations

First up is a wallpaper which took me ever so long to do and hence named Eon. The problem was that I started creating a dock icon set, a dock skin and a Google chrome theme. I found them boring after many hours of work and finally dumped them . This is the one piece I was happy with: [link]

Next up is a dock icon for Floola - A cool iPod manager I stumbled upon. I have created the preview to resemble the original Floola Site [link]
And this is my deviation : [link]

Finally something to celebrate both my birthday and launch of CS4. It is a dock icon pack called Qure( named so as I felt the new CS4 Icons were sick ). I always wanted to do something with rainbow colors and here it is   : [link]

By the way, the new trailer for Spirit is out. Check it out :
480p | 720p | 1080p
and yep, thanks for those +2500 pageviews...

Ok, here is dA Dropbox, a gift from my side for dA on its 8th birthday. This is a compiled batch file that copies the deviantART categorization on to your HD so that you can organize your deviations in a better way. This is the reason for my inactivity during the past 1 month. I was involved in developing this utility for the past month ; not actually, used  the free time I got among  lots of exams and stuff to study. This utility works in DOS mode. I am not an avid programmer to make a GUI version on my own .Download it here [link] . Send in your valuable views and please do report any bugs. I am happy to remove them and yes, Tons of thanks to all my watchers and friends and for that +1,000 page views .