Sink or Swim

Designing mockups today for a receipt printer company. I don’t say this a lot but I feel like I’m on fire! Normally, I need about 4-6 hours to design 2 mockups but I’m only on my 2nd hour and I already finished one kick-ass layout, if I may say so myself. I have these quotes to thank for.

I need to print these out and paste them on my wall so I can be inspired all the time.

You’ve probably heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). If not, please read here and learn how it can affect all of us. In line with this, plenty of sites, blogs and media companies have been standing up to show what they think about this. Wikipedia, for one went on strike and displayed this on their home page.

Google

Wired

See more here.

I finally finished a design for a website selling incontinence products. It wasn’t easy but I’ve decided to just make it as white and clean as possible. Health-related websites are easy to design because you only need to evoke a safe and clean feeling. It also needs to be easy to use or navigate and that all important information are available at first glance.

Having said that, here’s a great collection of health industry web designs that I’ve seen online. Just to inspire you if you happen to be designing for something similar. They are not the usual white boxy types but something that’s more out of the box.

Thanks to clearance laptops, owning a mobile computer is now within reach. Even students who usually have no budget can get one for as low as $199. I remember how I had to save for more than $2000 before just to get a decent laptop. Who knew that ten years after that, you can get way better specs for 1/4 the price? This is why kids these days are so lucky. Mobile computers are a necessity now, not just a luxury for those that can afford. It’s a must for school, for work and for personal use especially if you travel a lot.

The characteristics of embedded systems and applications

Gadgets and devices nowadays are getting smaller and compact. Thanks to embedded applications because they are the technology that made this happen.

Embedded applications are the most important component of compact devices that exist in the market today. These embedded applications are an integration of customized software and hardware that are embedded on a larger system to perform specific tasks.

Here are some characteristics of embedded applications that make it different from a general-purpose device like a personal computer:

• Dedicated to perform a particular task. Embedded systems contain microprocessor that has been programmed to perform a specific task. An example of an embedded computer is an iPod. It is particularly designed to play mp3 music only and can’t be use to do other functions like send an email, edit documents, and the like.

• Simple structure. The structure of an embedded system is simple as it does not contain any disk drive, operating system, monitor, RAM, etc. The embedded processor chip, controlled by firmware, manages the overall functionality of the device to which it is embedded. The firmware runs using limited hardware resources like limited memory capacity.

• Embedded systems are expected to run for many years without errors. Since they are embedded in a device, they can’t be replaced right way in case of failure so it is expected that the hardware and firmware of these embedded applications have been tested rigorously to make sure that it will last for many years or as long as the life of the device to which it is embedded. Embedded systems uses solid-state parts like flash memory as this are more reliable as compared to components with moving parts like buttons and switches.

• Embedded systems have the capability to recover by themselves if an error occurs.  Some devices with embedded systems like aircraft navigation must be running all the time for safety reasons, and so embedded applications used in these devices must be able to restart by themselves without shutting down the device, if problem occurs.

• Embedded systems have varied user interface. Some embedded applications can work without a user interface such as a keyboard while others have a much complicated user interface with the use of touch screen graphical user interface. Some embedded systems even use serial or network connection as the remote user interface of the embedded system.

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Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

You will forever inspire us, Steve Jobs. Rest in peace.

I can’t stress out more how happy I am that I finally converted from Windows to Mac. There are CONS obviously since there are plenty of shortcuts and applications from Windows that are not applicable to Mac. However, the PROs outweigh them so much you wouldn’t mind the little things anymore. I’m not going to blog about the merits of moving to Mac as this might turn out to be one of those Why Mac is better than Windows type of post. Instead, I’ll just share some of these really nice wallpapers that I grabbed from here. You can use these for your Windows desktop too, of course.