Hi there folks, I m in a process of rebranding myself (and obviously my work identity Conceptual Konfusion Creative Park). These changes will obviously start to show slowly since I m also occupied with lots of office work, plus I have more activity going on in my life since I moved back to Karachi, PK.

With this change I m trying to convey more openness and boldness in my approach, and the new things I’ve learned over the years. I m certainly more capable now than I was before and I would love to show that with what I do. I m not perfect and no one can be 100% but I sure can try.

You can download my new CV here, or if you’re looking for a printer friendly version, download from here.

Cheers.

Tags: approach, bold, ckcp, cv, new, update, website, work, yellow

This post is not written by me, but I do agree to the points raised here.
The original post can be found here. You can also download the ‘Free the internet’ desktop wallpaper here.

Pakistani Citizens Demand an End to Internet Censorship and Intimidation:

On Wednesday 19th May 2010, the Lahore High Court ordered the banning of Facebook across Pakistan. Facebook, a widely used social media network, has over 500 million active subscribers, globally. In Pakistan, over 2.5 million people use Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family, conduct business, philanthropic campaigns, manage events, and share photos, news, and other content. Some weeks ago, a user of Facebook created a page called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, asking other users to submit drawings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on 20th May 2010. The contents of this page have been considered blasphemous, resulting in a nationwide ban on the entire Facebook domain, instead of just the Facebook page itself. Between the 20th and 22nd May 2010, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked access to over 600 websites.

We condemn all content on the Internet that is abusive and disrespectful of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). However, we also strongly condemn the blanket ban on Facebook and the blockage of other websites. Every citizen has an inalienable right to information and by banning countless websites, Pakistanis have been denied the right to communicate and interact with each other and the rest of the world and their access to information has been curtailed. The blanket ban on Facebook and other websites has also had a very negative impact on Pakistan as countless small businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, students, volunteer groups, restaurants, art galleries, magazines, and media outlets use Facebook to conduct research, gain knowledge, operate businesses, and share information with their stakeholders. More importantly, Pakistanis have been denied the right to protest and express their condemnation of hateful and offensive content on the Internet as the very platforms that were, in fact, being used for dialogue and counter-argument, have been banned.

On Thursday 20th May 2010, a few members of civil society gathered at the Karachi Press Club to peacefully voice their opinion on the ban. Members of the press turned unruly and started threatening the citizens with contempt of court and blasphemy and labelled them as non-Muslims. A conglomeration of political groups were protesting outside the gates of the Press Club in support of the ban on Facebook. Some journalists attending the press conference informed the protesters about the viewpoint of the members of civil society, resulting in graver threats of violence. All the civil society members present at the Press Club managed to escape narrowly, after some verbal harassment as well as physical jostling.

Article 19 of the Pakistan Constitution guarantees every citizen shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, and there shall be freedom of the press, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, 1[commission of] or incitement to an offence.

Pakistani Citizens Against Internet Censorship and Intimidation have not violated the Constitution of Pakistan or committed blasphemy in any way as they have never shown any disrespect towards Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In fact, they have repeatedly condemned offensive and hateful content against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on Facebook before it was banned, on websites that have not been banned, on electronic media, as well as in print media.

Our Demands

1. The right to freely express our opinions without fear of threats and violence
2. An end to Internet Censorship and en-masse banning of websites

Endorsed By

1. Uks Research Centre-Islamabad – Tasneem Ahmer, Director
2. Shirkat Gah – Women’s Resource Centre – Fauzia Viqar
3. Aamir Raza Memon – Center for Peace & Civil Society
4. Pakistan ICT Policy Monitors Network
5. Bytes for All, Pakistan
6. Digital Rights Institute, Pakistan
7. PeaceNiche, Karachi
8. I.A. Rehman – Human Rights Activist
9. SAFMA

Tags: anti-censorship, free, freedom, the internet

It’s been a really long while since I wrote on my blog I think, was time I should update this baby of mine.

I’ve been in Karachi for about more than 2 months, and to tell you the truth I love it here more than I liked it there, sure I had drums and all, but this place is a blessing I tell you, for one I can enjoy Bar B Q’s till the morning instead of having to wrap it up by 11pm, that seriously sucked.

Anyways, I got my new Macbook sometime back and boy it’s awesome, it’s like super awesome, plus it looks even better with my magic mouse. My old Mac I handed to dad since he had fallen in love with this machine. So he’s finally getting on the internet you ask ? Internet.. he’s on Facebook, imagine that.. within a week… He was on PC for more than a year and hated it.. now he loves it and he’s metting up new people, it’s awesome.

I have also managed to escape a close iPhone snatching.. I swore at the guy.. how cool is that

Also I’ve been made a Founder at a deviantart group ‘dA-Pakistan‘ , if you’re an artist and are on Deviantart, you should definetely join us.. the crew involves Umar and Anam.. awesome people I tell you.

Coming back to the present times, I attended the blog awards yesterday, man it was awesome, even though I wasn’t feeling well, I decided I would go.. I had some suggestions on some of the topics being discussed, but I decided not to speak, again I wasn’t feeling well.. But I should’ve screamed about them. Pictures here.

Thats all for now.

Tags: awards, blog, fun, incident, iPhone, karachi, mac, snatching

I’ve been planning on writing this post for ages, but the XuQa redesign just didn’t let me spare a few minutes, but now that I have some, I shall speak.

The redesign had taken over us for quite some time, this whole redesign process started some 3 months back, and honestly redesigns are more effort and pain than first hand design, sure you already have basic elements in place, and most of the functional part + users are used to that UI. Now it’s quite an amount of brainstorming sessions that makes sure that all aspects of the present UI are covered in the new UI, unless of course something has to be cut down.

When we started the redesign of XuQa, we mostly planned on adding some features and fixing some issues which had been left incomplete or faulty by the last developers. Our goal was to fix most of the problems our users faced and make their life on XuQa simpler. I would like to give Onur and Umut a round of applause for their input and understanding of the Turkish XuQa community, Our CEO who knew exactly what we had to make right and of course our developers on the project Rahil (CTO), Ahmer (Senior Developer) & Rashid (Flash developer), our Quality Assurance Engineer Faraz. People from the management Fraz and Ahmed who made it possible that we could be as big of morons as we can be provided we pumped out our energy on this big baby whom we call XuQa.

I would also point out that Fraz currently is unstable health wise and would appreciate if you could say a small prayer for his health.

Even though the relaunch went fine, there are still little bugs that need to be squashed. In the next few days we’ll be fixing as much as we can, wish us Good luck.

Our current XuQa team consists of the following people:

• Zaki (Chief Executiove Officer)
• Rahil (Chied Technical Officer)
• Ahmer (Senior Developer)
• Shahzad Khan (Creative Director)
• Rashid (Flash Developer)
• Faraz (Quality assurance Engineer)

Thanks.

Tags: Ahmed, Ahmer, bugs, Faraz, Fraz, Rahil, rashid, redesign, relaunch, shahzad, xuqa, Zaki

A very Merry Happy New Year to everyone.

Let’s see the the last year was ok, kind of lost so little, gained so much, still living, surviving, enjoying ! Wohoo

I got myself a brand new Drum kit, now I m looking for a proper tutor. Another thing I wanted for quite some time, let me thank Zulfiqar Ali Faisal for paying for the loan for Drums, thanks much mate

Tags: 2010, banging, drums, drumset, fun, new year

Good things and bad things happened just about the same time. boinkers..

The good first.. Paras Amir Ali Allana who I know through flickr and Raheel Lakhani was in town recently with here family.. And since she’s a friend how could I not show her around, even though I haven’t seen this place much.

We went to a couple of places, including The Toy Museum, a full ride of MRT line (though it wasn’t intentional), then it was for a 3d movie experience, I took them to see G Force, and then the bungee which was my favourite, and then to round it all up, we ate at Lao Pa Sat. It’s a matter of one’s taste but Paras’s sister didn’t quite like the food there, which obviously made me think I should’ve taken them to some other food place I guess, but anyhow.. the day was fun.

Some days later I find out, my website and blog is being marked bad by google. some malicious links had been reported.. I was like woahh.. hello… bring that thing down.. I looked up, checked properly, verified and then requested a review… which was pretty quick and my website status on google was restored ( ).

Anyhow, it’s about only 2 days to Eid, and some how it doens’t really feel like Eid, but I did make a Eid card to put online. You can leave a comment about it on this page, it’s facebook page or the deviantart page.

Also now that I have my fish eye lens, telephoto lens, wide angle and macro lens I think it’s alot fun to do photography.. Also I m going to attend the GCT in the morning…

Here are some photos I took recently.

Tags: blog, bungee, camera, crap, down, Eid, fish eye, fun, Google, lens, macro, maza, naureen, paras, tafreeh, telephoto, visit, website, wide angle

Okay so we finally have XBOX 360, which is awesome and fun to play.

We got a couple of games with it when be bought it, the awesome thing is you can hook up your computer to it so you can wirelessly stream your content onto it

Also I’ve been doing some Time Lapse videos lately.. check them out below.

Tags: clouds, sunrise, video, xbox 360 pro

Again it’s been a while since I scribbled on my this little space here, but trust me when I say I’ve been occupied with lots of work lately, not to mention the tension that surrounds you as you approach the release date of your product.

This tension builds around each and every member of the team, but then we have to fight it out to bring out the best in us.

Anyways, We’ve approached the website development stage, which honestly is the part I m loving, it didn’t quite start out right, but it’s in the right direction. Something the users wanted, yes we’re doing just that.

I m hoping everything goes as planned now

Also Ramadan Mubarak to everyone, it’s our second Fast here in Singaland going strong

I’ve also successfully and regretfully forgotten to wish two important people their birthday. One is Uzma, who is one of my closest friend, and she’s super effin pissed at me :S Secondly my uncle.. whom I should’ve wished.. just slipped out of my mind… again you see guys I m occupied with so much shit.. I couldn’t get you folks on time, I m really really sorry.

Tags: azeem, howzat, ramadan, uzma, work

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