Recently I was setting up a website for my church (PKCMC); and decided to signup the hosting package from 3ix (www.3iX.org) which only cost RM146 for 2 years.
One of the reasons I pick 3iX was because it has this “Fantastico”, Fantastico (wikipedia) is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications to a website. And wordpress is one of the features that had ready.
After installing and looked simple till I realized something not right when using Chinese Character and it display “?????”; well, I don’t have this problems on other blog (creadaq.wordpress.com). Searching through google and found out there were many type of answers.
Most commons from Wordpress Support, however, it doesn’t help and I keep on looking at some blog with the same file (wp-config.php) which it have this code…
define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);
But it was working fine. So, don’t remove or replace it. It might corrupt your WP database.
Then I found out some resources about SQL database setting for WP. The main issue is that for most systems when you create a database, the collation is set at “latin1_swedish_ci” as default. You’ll need to change that to “utf8_unicode_ci” for all the tables where you plan to include Chinese characters in.
If you have cPanel, try look for mySQL Database or PhpMyAdmin
Well, first I though it was changed by just select it from the drop down. NO! There was many more to be done. Let me show the steps and screens. Please click screen to enlarge.
You’ll see something like this, might defer from yours as some plugins will add their own tables.
Anyway, on this screen, under the “collation” column, if you see latin1_swedish_ci, you’ll need to change that to utf8_unicode_ci!!! Click on the button 2nd from left on the column that says “Action”.
You’ll reach a page that says Structure as shown below, check everything that says latin1_swedish_ci, then click on the edit button which looks like a pencil.
You’ll reach another page like the one above, change everything to utf8_unicode_ci, then click Save.
Then, when you finished saving, go to the tab that says “Operations”.
Change again setting to utf8_unicode_ci, then press “Go”.
Repeat steps for all that are not “utf8_unicode_ci”. Make sure you click each of the list on the left menu.
Finally, you should be able to write in Chinese characters now. See pkcmc.org.
I think 2009 is the year of Twitter, it was hot and everyone has owned one account. Even our Malaysian PM- Najib has one, wonder what has he used it for, calendaring or his though of twitting it. Well, I was not interested to be his “follower”. 
And surprisingly, I have seen some of them come with million followers. Anyhow, people has engaged it and realize there were some designers have created some beautiful icons and buttons for twitter, especially the Blue bird. Just lovin them all…
So, there were some nice twitter icons for downloads.
TMS had developed and approach another great application “tmsWorkflow“, to allow user to design their own workflow modules easily to mange the complex mechanism without any hard-code or special customization.
Well, team has decided to brand it as Open Source software and given a name called ‘JOGET‘.
What is Joget?
The Joget is the most popular traditional dance throughout Malaysia. It is performed at cultural festivals, wedding celebrations and other social functions. Joget (video) is a couple dance and the tempo is fairly quick with a feeling of teasing and playing between the partners.
The concept and idea of using Joget, it has interpreted an application featured with flexibility and dynamic. It was how the dancer’s movement and way of performance. I was using the styles from each of them, especially the hand of dancers.
This logo should also design for impact, reliability and exceptionality. The shapes embody the spirit of strength and cohesion. The various elements are unified into a central theme of strength and vitality, yet they remain unique.
The original logo displayed shapes of hands. The approach was already overused and the Olivedrab mixing well with yellowgreen color did express energy, dynamic, active, and represents the continuous movement that characterizes the applications.
Well, the team has decided the final logo’s font type and colors.
The logo displayed on the screen of application.
Choosing the right colors for your web design is a decision that should not be taken lightly. Color is the first thing viewers notice on a webpage. It can evoke a variety of strong emotional reactions and each color can contain a different association. Although everyone’s experience and taste can vary greatly, there are still some basic tenants one can follow when working with color:
Consistency
This applies not only to font and background color, but also to the images and other cursory elements. It would be awkward to have a black and white image on a site full of bright, colorful backgrounds. It is typically best to choose colors that go along with the company branding and it is important that the brand identity seamlessly fits into the design. Also, limiting the design to just a few main colors—2 or 3 main colors and 1 or 2 accent colors—is usually a good standard and helps to maintain the consistency. Too many colors can cause your design to become erratic and visually confusing to the viewer.
Contrast
If you use colored copy, make sure that it contrasts well with the background to be easily legible. Stark color contrast is a powerful tool and can draw the eye, so make sure the most important elements have the most contrast in the design. Having muted colors for your title copy and a bright bold color for the body would be a poor use of contrast, applying viewer focus to the wrong element.
Complements
Complementary color choices are also extremely important. And it’s not just the literal complementary colors that are key, but also colors that complement each other as an accent or highlight. There are many different types of color balances and every designer should be very familiar with color theory and its impact on design. Well, I suggest you can use some online tools such as Kuler Adobe (kuler.adobe.com) to deal with the best combination.
Sometime keep one-two colors . Less color which easy to manage the content and contrast of the branding.
Color Theory
Some designers feel that it is enough to just have a feel for the right colors and that color theory is unnecessary. While having a good eye for color can certainly help develop a good design, color theory is still important. It is important to know what types of emotions your colors will convey so that you cater to your target audience. Click here for more information on color theory. See Color Theory from ColorJack (www.colorjack.com).
Marketing requested to design a banner for exhibition purpose, the content of the banner that include of all range of solutions provide by TMS.
The banner measurements are 31″ (W) x 78″ (H). It’s about a person height. And text was quite straight forward. Although it was plenty of space to insert pictures or images but I decided not to use any of it.
Somehow, it was pretty fun to see how to form the typo with elements, ‘Typography is an art’. Well, I’d done some research like how the angle and rather keeping the same horizontal path.
Instead of, I used a lot of elements such as stripes, rounds or curves to form together with typo.
Eventually, we go for something clean and neat…
It has been quite some time I’d never been to any Design conferences or exhibition; lately I saw this article from newspaper posted about KLDesignweek 2009 (www.kldesignweek.com). It was claimed the largest annual international design event held in Malaysia.
So I had this idea to bring along the designers to check it out, hope to refresh their mind and gain some inspirations, ideas and recharge their creative passion! As designers, we are creative - we have to be. Even creative people need inspiration. So the question is, where do we look for inspiration?
Since it was held from 27 March till 4 April, well, it certainly a good time to drive down to KL on Monday, why? I believe Monday’s traffic should be smoother compare to other day.
When we reached at CapSquare that located in between Dang Wangi and Jalan Ampang
(www.capsquare.com.my), there were not many people around, I found out the shopping complex was quite small and it was not located at the hotspot such as Bukit Bintang or KLCC.
It was such a quiet place to explore new things. Btw, most of the pictures were taken by my 2 megapixels phone (p990i); regretted has not brought my gear along. 
The exhibitions have separated into 3 portions at different part of the complex. 2nd floor was occupied by individual designers and creative studios. 3rd floor was occupied by most of the commercial purpose such as colleges, design schools.
Close up and from far. Wonder how much time the designer spent on it!
Some wonderful works were done by local designer. Just wondered some of these as well as alternatives for where to find appropriate sources of inspiration.
One great idea amazed me, recycle plastic bottles and reform it into one ceiling lamp, and designer was actually using part of the handle (see small cutting part). They’re not original anymore, yet it has its own enormous compilation.
After we had our lunch, we continue on the 3rd exhibition area that located on the other site of hall; well, nothing much here and it was displayed all the collection of designers’ ideas - ‘Safe the green‘ or ‘Don’t use Plastic bag’. These ideas motivated people reduce the usage of plastic bag and save the pollution from our month’s earth.
Few of us love the designs so much and which to buy those bags. Too bad, it was for exhibition purpose and not for sale.
At the end of the exhibition, I managed to buy this book-”The Web Designer’s Idea Book” which only cost RM75 from Basheer Graphic Book (www.basheergraphic.com). A book by Patrick McNeil (Creator of designmeltdown.com)
Why I bought it?
First thing in my mind about the nature of business, clients can be our best friends or our worst enemies. We have all experienced it; our client wanting to defy all of your knowledge and control the entire creative process. They see their competitors’ websites and want exactly the same thing “but better“. The problem is that they have uninformed, preconceived notion of their website and neglect to consider the many other factors in building a website.
Well, this could be the reason; we must educate our client so that they may understand your design decisions. And I think this guide book will ‘Feed‘ them nicely.
It’s the ultimate guide to themes, trends and styles in websites design. For example, sites by themes, there’s Nature, Food, Old paper, Splatters, Workplace etc. But the key is to let design galleries inspire to design, not inspire my design.
I try challenge to break the design cycle, explore uncharted territory and be original. Go beyond what has been mentioned here; seek out our own unique inspirations. Anything can inspire you if you will just let it.
Since when I was engaging with twitter, thanks to my old friend KCtang recommended. It was a great tool and so many people was engage with it, “have you twit lately?” soon it become a habit and you might feel uncomfortable if you don’t twit. Oh no! I think it was different type of “Bird-flu” spreading so fast….
Recently I realize some of user has done great design to personalize their designs on twitter. There has already been a range of quality designs showcased on various sites, which has shown an emergence of trends such as the ‘sidebar’. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices around Twitter background design and get to work creating our own.
There were 3 different types of background approach:
1) Using repeating background pattern
http://twitter.com/daniesq, http://twitter.com/msphotogirl and more
2) Background Graphic fading to background color
http://twitter.com/bittbox, http://twitter.com/GordyMac/ and more
3) Extra Large Background Graphic
http://twitter.com/ijustine, http://twitter.com/betterinpink and more
However, you could also get some customize background or template that provided by twitter, http://www.twitip.com/custom-twitter-backgrounds/
Personally I prefer 2nd approach that background graphic fading to the background. Using a single graphic on your profile can help add some visual interest. And it load much faster with less graphics. Let’s start to do my own background on my Sidebar!
First of all, click on profile setting and go to “Change design colors”. Well, brown is always my first choice, change the tone from background, links, text etc. Immediately you can preview the colors from screen. Save the settings once you have decided.
Once I have done that, I get the measurement which is width 460 and height 600; copy the exact background color and start my own theme.
First thing in my mind – Top view on my sidebar; it was easier to arrange my elements such as paper, camera and most familiar’s top view - a cup of coffee.
Just find some of the picture from Google images. Or royalty free images from Stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)
For example, nice quality of Pencil - http://www.remarkable.co.uk/downloads/wooden_pencil.jpg
Then, rotating and reshape my “ingredient” on PS (sound like frying and cooking, yeah!). Used a lot of drop shadow and simple effects such as rotate and wrap the graphics. Other than that, it was quite straight forward.
Once I have done that and save in JPEG, go back to the settings and click on “Change background images”. Browse and save changes. Done!
Take a look at http://twitter.com/twentyplus
The day before, I wasn’t knew anything about the Hot Air balloon fiesta. George told me about this event since I were having a meeting at Putrajaya, – 1st Putrajaya International Hot air Balloon Fiesta 2009. (www.myballoonfiesta.com). It was a 4 days event from 19 March till 22 March 2009.
In fact, my meeting was scheduled on 10 am, according to the fiesta’s itinerary that 7.30am onwards that the Balloons area was opened to photographers. Could be the
Woke up quite early and it was excellent morning for balloons day. When I reached Putrajaya Precinct 2 around 8am, where the balloons taking off, didn’t expect that few balloons were ready to go on air. Not much crowd although it was school holiday.
Well, first day of event, saw most of the photo kaki were well equip and everyone just busy taking their best shots! Surprisingly, Canon has a booth setting up too.
I stayed around but didn’t take much photos, firstly, my dress code was “not allowed” me to run around (yup! I wished I had pair of sport shoe with jeans). However, it was not cloudy but hot sun. Around 9.15am, another batch of team’s equipment was carried by the 4 wheels pick ups, I couldn’t wait much longer and decided to go off for my meeting.
There’ll be more.. please logon to www.creadaq.com
Recently, I was researching and did some works on CSS and new photoshop technics. And I found some of the useful tutorials site that provide a very good steps and even trick to improve your website.
Tutorials 9 (www.tutorial9.net)
Kailoon Design (kailoon.com/category/tutorials/)
PSD tuts (psd.tutsplus.com)
PSD Rockstar (www.psdrockstar.com)
CSS Library (www.dynamicdrive.com)
CSS Drive (www.cssdrive.com)
LAYERS Magazine (www.layersmagazine.com)
Sometime it’s difficult to create a total new concepts with any “references”; but in this case, it happen to have Similarities. Thanks to Similarities - a flickr set of pictures and design that pairs of similar images against each other, exposing their striking conceptual similarity. Too bad we won’t know who is the creator behind it.
The thing to keep in mind, that creativity is simply the sum total of your mental resources, the catalog of ideas you’ve accumulated over the years by being alive and alert and attentive to the outside world. Well, when you explore Similarities, challenge yourself to question the subconscious influences and stealthy inspiration that creep into your own creative output.
Although it has been more than 40 years (1961-2008) that doesn’t mean people has forgotten. 
Personally, I created something with a similar inspiration source to enhance my design and creativity. Fine-tune and don’t copy elements or positioning exactly. Another word, copy with smart not copy blinded.
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