My second day of Comic Konga is here, and since today is halloween, I thought I would do something appropriate.

Day 2. I have been hearing the buzz about J.K. Rowling recently declaring Albus Dumbledore’s sexual persuasion, as a sort of post mortem to the series. I’ve also been hearing all the people complaining or lauding the gesture on her part. I think all of that is rubbish. She’s a writer of fiction, and a very good one at that. Let her do or say whatever she wants. It’s not supposed to have some great social significance. It’s a story, and the only real interest in this extra information is for other writers who enjoy this sort of world-building data. The rest of the human race needs to get a life. Considering all the noise, this little halloween gag came to mind, and I thought it was the perfect fodder for another comic.

I just finished reading the last of the Harry Potter books a couple of days ago. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I can say categorically that no new revelations about anyone’s sexual orientation within the world of the books is going to change anything as far as the narrative goes. It’s a very rich world that Rowling has created and if she chooses to share some of her thought process in coming up with the various characters, I don’t see why it needs to be an issue. Some people are just waiting around to be incensed and shocked.

And so, speaking of shock, with this comic I wish you all a Happy Halloween.

Samir

Welcome to my first contribution to the first ever Comic Konga! What is Comic Konga? It is a little blog comic festival of sorts, thought up by Vishal. The idea is to post 5 days of original comic content to your blog. The official start was yesterday, but since I missed a day, I’ll just make up an extra day at the end.

I haven’t been drawing much recently, and I haven’t created a comic of any sort for years. Unfortunately I’ve also not got the opportunity in recent times to create much illustrated content for clients, so this is a great excuse to exercise my comic-ing muscles.

Day 1, my first attempt. I wanted to start simple, so after I got the initial gag into my head, I did a simple sketch with a ball-point pen in my sketch book. That was scanned in and taken into Inkscape. A vector tracing and some simple flat gray vector shapes later, it was complete.

Creating comic strips and even a single panel one such as this is a lot of fun. I love the combination of writing and art, and it’s something that can give you the satisfaction of completion fairly quickly. I am looking forward to doing more over the coming days. Hope you like it, and feel free to share it with others. I thing it is quite apt for the Web 2.0 and social bookmarking world we live in.

Samir

The ever active Forest Parks has tagged me with a new meme of his making. This one is about displaying your mug and letting yourself be know — putting a face to the rubbish we force your poor unsuspecting readers to read, basically.

I think it’s a good idea, but I wonder how many people are a little attached to their online anonimity. On the other hand, someone like me doesn’t have any problems with it. In fact, my stunningly un-remarkable mug has always graced my about page. Not wanting to simply copy and paste the existing photo into this post, I decided to present a deep photographic insight into Samir Bharadwaj, with never before seen scenes, and up close and personal sights.

We begin with me in my element … Aah! The great out doors. Of course, like all big stars of my stature, I let my lowly body double do this sort of thing. My time is precious, after all. I also have it on good authority that he’s much sexier than I am in that light. We all need a dramatically lit serene portrait of ourselves to show our distinguished side, so there’s that. And since I wanted to really open up to my readers more than most bloggers ever do, you also get a exclusive shot of my thumb. Really, it is very important to me. What would I vever do without my opposable thumb? It’s my favourite finger.

That’s my bit, and what follows is all the general meme stuff. Feel free to add yourself to the line of crazy faces by joining in on your blog.

This is me: >>

Blogging can become unpersonalized as we rarely see the author, so the idea of this meme is to let us all have a little peak at the person behind the blog.

Instructions:
- Copy this post and amend the text above ‘This is me’.
- Replace the image with a nice smiley, silly, serious picture of yourself.
- Make sure your name and link is added to the participant list.
- Tag and link some fellow bloggers in the ‘Show us yourself’ area
- Let them know they have been tagged.

See us here:
Forest Parks from The Random Forest
Samir Bharadwaj

Show us Yourself:
I was going to name a few people but then I realised that they all either had their faces prominently plastered on their About pages, or they were fairly generous with sharing shots of themselves in their posts. So, I leave this one open to all. If you read this, consider this an open invitation and a personal tag from me to join this mass face-pulling competition. And do leave a comment with a link here if you could, I would love to see what new faces join the blogosphere.

Samir

Fresh Finds is back in a new form. I was using a special plugin to create my link blog within WordPress, but I’m switching to plain old link posts in a special category. I will convert my older links into back-dated posts in time to make everything consistent. Now on to the links.

• 43 Exceptionally Useful AJAX Applications
  Not just is this a great showcase of the variety of uses AJAX techniques can be put to, but also a very useful list of scripted applications that you might like to try out on your site.

• Guide To Making Money Online With Blogging
  “Oh no! Not another one!” might be a valid response, but if you truly are interested in the monetization of websites and blogs, it is always useful to see yet another take on the subject from someone who has actually “made money online”. The links to articles and resources in this post at Connected Internet are a good reference too.
• Google Ranking Factors – SEO Checklist
  Who doesn’t want to know how to rank well in Google? This is a very comprehensive resource on the subject.

If you have any favourite resource lists or comprehensive online guides that you swear by, I would love to hear about them. Please share them in a comment below.

Samir

At long last it is here, and the waiting is over. Blog Action Day has been on the cards for a while now, and it has grown from strength to strength since it was first introduced to the world. This site has also grown from strength to strength through this event, because I chose to take on the daunting task of writing an entire series of articles on, what I felt were, the failings of the environmental movement, and more specifically, the communications that it engages in. Now I am finally at the end of my journey with this discussion, and I thought it was simply not right to critique without suggesting solutions to the issues I have brought up over the past eight articles. Considering this blog is meant to be a record of my activities in online enterprise, it was only fitting that I tackle what kind of online presence would solve some of the communication shortcomings that are facing the ecological movement.

These are general traits which could very easily be used in any medium, online or off, but the elements that would make for an effective ecological website are:

1. Originality
2. Irreverence
3. Entertainment
4. Recurrence

(Read more…)

Human beings can be very lazy creatures. That fact bears repeating because it is ultimately the core influence behind many of the numerous, seemingly distinct, issues that plague our species and our culture. In fact, we are a strange bunch indeed, as we will often go to any lengths to fulfil our never-ending quest for in-action. So much so, that the things we choose to do to feed our laid-back nature often end up being more arduous and involved than the thing we try to avoid. We can get very serious and single-minded about it, this avoidance of work. And anything we take that seriously must have some significance in the world we build. In this world we build, a lot of the stumbling blocks the environmental movement has to put up with are a result of laziness.

This slothful nature does a lot of harm, and messes up a lot of situations in our world which could have been averted or rectified given a smidgen of attention and a modicum of effort at the right time. But alas, the misdeeds have been done and the monster is out of the bag. The best we can do is to understand this fundamental human behaviour and its causes. The major causes of human laziness are:

1. Laziness
2. Yet more laziness
3. I’m too lazy to come up with a third bullet-point

(Read more…)

Once a school of thought, such as environmentalism, becomes fashionable, the next logical step is for people to impose upon it even more systematic and organisational elements. Very soon the “thought” is far removed from the school and rules and beliefs take over. Who comes up with the rules? Whoever has enough power as the movement congeals into an amorphous mass of people who all believe in, what they think is, a path to enlightenment or meaning of some sort. Beliefs are often open to a little embellishment and a lot of short-hand over time, and the collective faith in the common cause keeps them alive and thriving no matter what their constituent percentage of truth. People accept because they want to belong, to believe, to be part of the club, and they want to be told what to do. This is how schools of thought are slowly transformed into belief systems. Slowly, but surely, the green movement has started down this slippery slope. All the signs exist and all the signature behaviours are rearing their ugly heads. It is only a matter of time before all these human components drive the environmental movement towards its inevitable destiny and it takes its first steps into becoming a religion.

Why am I so sure? Because a lot of the popular following of environmental concerns never troubles itself with such unnecessary luxuries as understanding and factual information. Most of the popular environmental movement is based on hearsay, and if we didn’t live in such a noisy world of information glut, we would probably have had some charismatic environmental messiah appear to seal the deal by now. That’s all that is missing to transform this loose collection of beliefs and mores into a more rigid construct. Every organised religion requires a certain set of behaviours amongst its followers before it can truly be a religion in the traditional organised sense. Remember, I am talking about religion here, not spirituality, or philosophy, or even theology, all of which are very different and less cumbersome beasts. The popular environmental movement has already begun to exhibit some of these proto-religious elements which include:

1. Blind Faith
2. Dogma
3. Ritual
4. Moral Superiority

(Read more…)

It is a very sad day indeed, when a legitimate and serious human issue becomes fashionable. It finds itself in the same un-enviable position as those “significant” books that catch the public imagination in a sudden sweeping wave. You begin to see the book everywhere — people carry it with them to work, they display it proudly on their book shelf, and they make sure they are seen flipping through it in all the most public places. Why would this be a sad situation? Because a trendy book is often mistaken for a popular one. The list of “significant” tomes that were bought by millions, read by some, and understood by few is too long to itemize in this article, and unfortunately the story of popular causes is along the same lines. The environmental movement picked up a lot of steam in the hippy culture of the 60’s. Fortunately, as much as that era might be celebrated in myth, back then “green” was still simply a colour and eco-friendliness was a fringe (if vocal) movement, as were the flower children. Over the successive decades, the changing climate patterns, a renewed interest in spirituality, a hectic data-soaked existence, and a romanticisation of the 60’s to some extent, have resulted in a mass growth of the environmental movement. Now a lot of people who can’t really pronounce “environmentally” know that “green” is the new cool thing to be. At long last the environmental movement has the dubious distinction of being a matter of fashion.

Fashions come in many guises and many sizes. The same has been true for the green movement through the last century, and it continues in present times. The environmental issues, and their popular paraphrased versions that most people hold as true, have birthed many schools of social fashion. They all form the mass of thought that makes ecology a socially acceptable topic of discussion today, but they are also quite distinct from one another. The schools of fashionable thought regarding the environmental movement today can be roughly divided into these:

1. Eco-friendliness is for Losers
2. Eco-friendliness is for Winners
3. My Eco-friendliness is Bigger Than Yours

(Read more…)

This report is a bit late. I’ve been quite busy pondering the details of the series of environmental articles I’ve been writing (more below), and my regular report date of the 4th slipped me by without my noticing. Better late than never, here are the highlights of the month that was on Samir Bharadwaj dot Com.

More Photography Tips

With the continuing success of my original post of photography tips, it has felt a bit strange even for me to have not written anything further on the topic. In September I got the perfect excuse. There was a blog writing project over at DailyBlogTips.com on the topic of Tips & Tricks. My article on the subject was a lighter take on a listing of tips on how to take clear and steady pictures without a tripod. I think I probably only got one vote in the competition to find the top posts among the bunch, but I am very happy with the article and I do hope it grows into one of the major attractions of this site in the long run.

Environment Series

As part of my count-down to Blog Action Day, 2007 I started writing a series of articles in September on the theme of The Environmental Movement and Why It’s Not Working. At the time of this writing there are still 4 articles to go in the series. I took on a bit of a large challenge here, trying to put out a 9-part series on the environmental movement and its communication shortcomings. I’ve always wanted to add a new category on this blog to cover my general scientific interests, and this seems like a strong way to start on that path.

(Read more…)

Marketing is king. That is the world we have created for ourselves over the past few centuries, and that is the world we live in. The persuasion towards commercial activity is bar none the largest source of human communication in known history. Nothing can compare in sheer volume or variety. The great epics, the brilliant literature, the pulp, none of of those forms of recorded communication can compete with the juggernaut that is modern marketing spiel. It is everywhere you look, and everywhere you turn, and there is nowhere to hide. It is little surprise then that when the environmental movement really became a main-stream entity in the last century, it adopted the language which was the most familiar and the most lucrative in the world: marketing. The lessons of the Earth and nature that had in prior times been imbibed into the human psyche through myth and tale, were now reduced to quick and brutal tag lines and pithy slogans. The environmental awareness movement, which should have stood for education, understanding, and community had been distilled into a concentrated phial of pure hype.

Today, the marketing continues. Our world is now even more inundated with commercial messages, not just because there is more to buy and sell, but also because there are so many more interruptive avenues to communicate your message with. In this purchaser’s paradise that we have built for ourselves, we now find that a new counter movement has begun. Those who prefer to keep their heads and think, on occasion, have realised that all this sales talk is distracting and senseless. They use the much brandished power of “choice”, of which the commercial soothsayers are know to sing praises, and choose to ignore most of this commercially instigated communication. Hence we have a large segment of the population that simply ignore the website banners and skip the commercials.

That leaves the environment movement, with its clever marketing and its intelligent branding, to deal with that mass of people who do look at every ad, and do click on every special offer, and do not think much about any issues beyond consumption. The ecological initiative is losing its most important audience, and this is often because of the methods of communication rather than the content of the messages. Some of the communication methods that often alienate discerning people from the environmental movement are:

1. Hyperbolic Statements
2. Fear Tactics
3. Guilt Trips
4. Sales Pitches

(Read more…)