I m not going to write much on my life in this post, I m going to write about Tea Break here.

For me the project Tea Break started when Asim Imtiaz and me used to sit only rooms apart and me and Zair sat inches apart in Creative Chaos. Asim got me into this project since he had seen me working on freelance projects that had turned out beautiful. Anyways the moment Asim told me about the idea, I knew I was going to be a part of it, but I never got to make the design of the first version since I was busy with some stuff, and Zair managed to bring the first design online.

The second design we pushed online, which is still online as I write this post, was made by me, I did the design and most of the front end code, then Asim had all the development fronts covered, Zair helped me a tiny bit with the CSS, and Ammar was the mastermind when it came to market our little baby that was Teabreak.

There was a launch party held when we pushed this major update on the website, and I got to meet some really awesome people that includes Madam Jehan Ara, Ramla Akhter, Munir Usman, Imad Qamar and some I knew from before like Dr. Awab Alvi (who I believe is more blogger than a doc ).

We had many updates to follow after that and we covered many blogging events after that, and the response had mostly been awesome, except some tid bits. When ever I got to speak about Tea Break I did so and people got excited when I told them that I designed that website.

Later after quite some time had passed, we thought we needed to upgrade it a bit, and we starting taking feedback from users and also started building up a database of our ideas and new requirements. During this time, I flew to Dubai, where I had no access to a personal computer, only my office iMac, I obviously wasn’t allowed any work on that, so Tea Break suffered some development time on that, but it wasn’t long till I realised Dubai wasn’t the place for me, so I flew back when I had an offer from this another company ‘Xuqa‘, and the thought that it’s a game development company made it even better, so any how, I flew back to Pakistan, but even then due to my work hours I still wasn’t able to work on Tea Break, then the company decided that all it’s employees are going to be moved to Singapore, which is obviously super nice , so we moved here and again, lack of time followed me, but any how, I found a week end and finally did a design. It looks good to me, but sadly due to the amount of work I already have, I will not be working on Tea Break as of now.

Even though it’s been an awesome experience, I m going to go off the Tea Break experience, since I believe my work (both, paid and for Tea Break) was being effected, I could concentrate on only one thing at a time, and I chose money ( ) , no I m quitting Tea Break at least for a while due to the amount of work I have here at Xuqa (now Game Ventures), also since I couldn’t dedicate any time to Tea Break, I didn’t want it to suffer any more because of me. I m sure the rest of the Tea Break team will find an awesome designer to fit into place. I might join Tea Break at a later stage, but for now I m not working on it, I need to focus on my office work first.

It has been an awesome journey with you guys (Asim, Ammar, Asadullah, Zair), I wish you all the best for the future of Tea Break and it’s child projects.

Tea Break is and will always be in my heart and mind, it’s one of the best things I have done

Tags: ammar, asadullah, asim, awab, awesome, break, deisng, designer, development, game ventures, imad, jehan, loose, main, munir, quit, ramla, tea, team, win, work, xuqa, Zair

I m writing this post a few days after by birthday, which I had on the 22nd of April, and why was is this a late post, because I was occupied by by quite some stuff.

The 22nd of April, even though was my birthday, it isn’t that much of a special day, it’s like the norm. I mean I grew a year older, one more year for being alive. Thank you everyone who called, emailed, messaged me a birthday wish.

I’ve also been occupied by the cricket game we’re building, and I m pretty sure it’s going to knock your socks off. I just got started with the animations part, I m hoping it gets interesting for me to develop and for you to play..

Recently when Adobe Flash CS4 launched, they added up some really good features to it, one such tool they added is called ‘the bone tool’, what does it do ? see here.

Also I had a word with my family lately, and I got to know that my mom’s friend’s parents passed away, please pray for them, may their souls rest in peace. Ameen.

Anyways, I m gonna cut this post short, it’s freakin 5:11 am here, I need to sleep a bit. Ciao.

Tags: 22nd April, adobe, birthday, cs4, death, flash, friends, fun, Happening, life, miss, normal, random, work

So I flew back to Singapore on Thursday, 2nd of April at night, and got here in the morning of the 3rd. I wouldn’t say it was the best flight I ever took, but I guess it did the job, I m not going to whine much, since I’ve gone through some really nice things lately.

When I flew back here, there was some work to be done from my side, which had taken me pretty long, and thats because I was on an artist’s block, yeah we artists go through one every now and then.. but as soon as I was here, some sort fo enery blew through me, mostly due to the chnage of environment, and voila I had the thing done and approved, a big smile on my CEO’s face mean’t some good things, and guess what, I got an iMac to work on.. I had been asking for a mac since Jan, so this, came out pretty good.

I was setting up the mac today (4th April) , I noticed there was an extra white (polycarbonate) mac also lying around, I little pooch paach I found out it was our Game designer’s extra mac that was lying at home, and since our Game Dev wanted to use it he had bought this baby to office.. I bet he’s feeling good he did too.. I asked him if he was interested in selling it, and hell yeah, there it was.. I got it off him.. This very post is being written on it The story does not end here mates (if there’s anyone reading that is ) by evening I knew I wanted to go out, but by going out or doing something doesn’t mean eating out, thats not going out and doing things, so our CTO and Game developer thought it’s best to hit the gym, and thats what we did. We stayed there for roughly 30 minutes, but I think thats good enough to get us started back on. I did the cycling for 10 minutes on about 90+ RPM and than Ran for about 5-7 minutes. It’s not that much I know, I just started back on.

Lets hope I can keep it going that way, and ladies and gentlemen, we’re still not done yet, I managed to set up the macs, yes both of them, and still manage to prepare a rough draft of another game we’re working on. Which I plan to be done with atleast the mock ups by Monday Inshallah.

Thats basically it for now. I m going to hit the bed or maybe watch a movie now. Ciao.

Tags: apple, applications, artists block, beautiful, CEO, CTO, cycling, flight, fun, good, graphics, GUI, gym, job, mac, nice, running, singapore, workout

With this post going up, I came to a realization that I’ve been putting up alot of energy in lots of things, keeping me fresh and popping with ideas, which obviously is a good thing, I always thought distration is a bad thing, but somehow I think it’s good to be distracted from time to time, to keep one self fresh.

Also aot has been happening lately, I put up the above image titled ‘Redbull – Energizing bloggers in Pakistan’, the reason I did that was because all the recent bloggers meet up have had free distribution of Redbull, thus keeping up active throughout the event, I thought we as bloggers should thank them some how, thus the image.

As that image was uploaded to deviantart and facebook, I thought would receive some comments on why bloggers are being associated with Redbull, turned out all the feedback I got was mostly positive, check out the facebook link and you’ll know.

Also since I m writing, I want to reach out to talented designers with knowledge and experience in XHTML, CSS, (PHP and Flash is a plus point).

Also I put up two new artworks, you might as well check those out.

Tags: awesome, bloggers, meet up, red bull, update, work

6th March 2009, the day active bloggers in Karachi met again to discuss various issues affecting our nation online and offline, organized by Google Pakistan, CIO Pakistan and Wateen Telecom, turned out to be quite some resolutions and suggestions, thoughts and valuable brainstorming.

I reached the venue a little late, since I was coming straight from work, and particularly because the taxi driver took the longer route for some reason. *Curses the evil taxi wala * Any how as I reached that place I discovered most of the people were already there, I recoginized some faces instantly (Ali K. Chisti, Awab Alvi, Batool, Jehan Ara, Rabia, Badar, Salaina). It was a little surprize that most people know me, I m not much of a proper blog, I mostly write crapy stuff, but anyways..

I was delighted at the fact that this meet up was to discus activism issues, my blog isn’t about activism but what I do like about the idea of activism is that it gives people what’s rightfully theirs and they get their voices heard.

After my arrival, soon Imran Hussain and Umair K. Jadoon were there too,  it was the first time I met them properly, the first time I met them was at the First bloggers meet up, but I didn’t get time to get to know them properly, until obviously we had a great online blogger meet up. Great ppl.

The topic that we discussed was about how to get a better image back to Pakistan, since we’re getting all the negative publicity recently, be it the government or the militants, it’s just not good, so we thoughts it’s time for all the nerds to take the situation into their hands (j/k)

We discussed matters of importance, being it sponsoring bloggers from the outside world or setting up proper resolutions and following them, the sponsoring bloggers idea was brought int light by Badar Khushnood, while Salaina suggested that she could draft a national PR policy. Farhan was of the opinion that we could all put up Pakistan’s flag on our blogs to reflect our love for the country (I came up with that graphic, that I allow anyone to freely use on their blog, but please host it on your own).  I suggested that bring out the positive image, snap along the way and upload the beauties of the country, be it people, places, events or anything on the positive side.

After our discussions and all, we moved to the Bowling area, where some awesome refreshments awaited us..it wa already time my tummy felt the need to get a top up

So we had out tiny snacks, some coffee and then.. yes right then we bowled our heads off.. didn’t make for some good score but had fun.. I had Awab Alvi, Badar and Rabia as my competetors.. It had to be nice and surely it was.

The picture right at the begining was a snap shot that was taken while lights went out for a bit. Thanks to Rabia for the picture.

Related:

Blogap – Bloggers Association of Pakistan

‘Karachi Blogger’s Meet up’ [Highlights]

Highly energized Bloggers meet in Karachi

Tags: 09, activism, ali, ammar, awab, Badar, bloggers meetup, blogs, discussion, fun, Imran, karachi, plans, Rabia, resolutios, thoughts, umair

As you can notice from the image above, I’m really loving my cheap drawing tablet. I tried playing with it, and those were the outcomes, even though the game we launched recently at Xuqa on Facebook, is more of a glossy thing than it is sketchy, you can check it out here (You need to be logged in to facebook to access the game).

Also I’m going to starting on some really nice games here on Xuqa, soon. But for now we trying to iron out all the bugs present in the current game system, which are very small in numbers and significance though.

Oh and the other image that you see above is my new artwork which I recently posted on deviantart, which can be seen here. It was basically my first (finished) artwork on my new drawing tablet

Anyways, since I m at work, and I haven’t got my internest connection subscription renewed, I think I’ll continue my stories later, I m hoping I can get my subscription renewed.. Till then..

Later.

Tags: awesomeness, drawing, facebook, game, launch, love, madonna, pokerama, tablet, work

I’ve been feeling great about myself lately, why? I’ve completed some of my stuff that was kind of due, so far I haven’t seen any real bugs either.

And man oh man, I finally got the time to take a swim in pool, yep I mean the one thats in our appartments, and boy oh boy, it was awesome.. Somehow the water felt lighter and different !

And guess what I m now feeling some what lazy and sleepy, a lil worn out ofcourse, been working for some 14 hours already. Yes hardwork that is

Oh and this I should not forget, one of my really awesome cousin’s just got engaged yesterday (Sunday), I wish her all the goodness and blessing in her and his life.

Tags: blah blah, boy, engagement, fun, image, pool, random, swim, water, wedding, work

So I completed my portfolio pdf file a couple days back, it was a little rush job, so it was basically made in photoshop and compiled in Indesign. But I plan to put up an accesible version soon. Till then, download this version.

You can also grab this from my deviantart page.

Tags: beautiful, blue, clouds, download, grass, khan, other, portfolio, sexy, shahzad, teabreak, thing, timesvr, work, wow, yello

I had been pretty much been occupied with a facebook application our team here at Xuqa had been working on, and it’s very much near completion now. Things are progessing nicely and design and development is getting closer to the polished stage. We’re left with the Quality Assurance department. After that we’re good to launch.

After that, we’re hoping to start off with our multiplayer game, I should tell you all our games are multiplayer, but the ones that we’re going to bring out soon are awesomeness. We’re building bigger things, and this project might take ages to complete, but it should be there, and we’ll make lots of money while we’re at it..

Also since we sit our asses off in our appartment/office, I’ve decided to get exercising, since it’s a necessity now, I have a really big, no, HUGE tummy. I eat alot? oh yes!

Anyways I m missing mom quite, it’s also her birthday tommorrow, so I need to call her on the right time too, hope I do that.

Peace.

Tags: app, deadline, design, development, exercise, facebook, fun, games, sports, ui, work, xuqa

I’ve been enjoying all the good days so far, even though I do get angry during work sometimes, but it all goes away when the final thing is out, the angre is obvioulsy just so that the right thing comes out.

I’ve been in Singapore for quite some time now, but honestly haven’t really gone some place thats like an outing, dont’ count eating out to be outing. Oh and I’ve had sushi and crabs here, tasted awesome.

I’ve also had some desi food, but obvioulsy I m always trying out newer but halal food.

Today, we had newer tables arrive at work, and boy these are some awesome tables, we had got the awesome chairs a day or two bck, and these awesome tables just add it awesome !

I m also woring on the UI of a facebook app for my current employer, and so far it has turned out nicely, I hope it turns out to be a hit

Also I’ve finally started using Google Docs, and other web apps.

Tags: dishum, enjoy, singapore, ui, work