Desinerd

Now that i do *part-time* design work for my projects, i decided it was time to get all the free fonts available. As i am using ubuntu here are some awesome packages and links for fonts.

Packages : (command to install on ubuntu)

sudo apt-get install ttf-gentium ttf-dustin ttf-georgewilliams ttf-sjfonts sun-java6-fonts ttf-larabie-deco ttf-larabie-straight ttf-larabie-uncommon

Another cool site:

http://crunchbang.org/archives/2007/10/13/465-free-fonts-for-ubuntu/

So i have been working on fixing my internet stuff, so here are my *new new* things.

• http://www.kwippy.com - This is an awesome *twitter* replacement
• http://www.dipankar.name - A little bit of self promotion, uses blueprintcss (i am still learning he he)
• http://apps.facebook.com/dipankar - A test facebook application which demonstrates minifb.py

More later, i am working on some more interesting things …. will write more soon

Recently, i went to gaffar(New Delhi) and got 2 cell phones to muck around with it ….

One is a sony ericksson another a nokia

Turns out i needed a CA42 cable(Nokia), but it still does not work. The sony Ericksson rocks …..

I was thinking about the book *The long tail* , its a great read even if it is  bit old. The ideas are very much relevant in today’s businesses and will continue to be as long as the Gaussian bells are around. After some discussions with my friends i chanced upon this interesting idea that using the *long tail model* you can effectively change the consumer usage patterns, much like the Heisenberg principle in physics. Lets take a simple example to show this :

Not too many people want to watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon, so imagine X (a company which rents out movies) keeps this following the *long tail* concept. Some how it gets picked up by some movie person , who recommends it …. this will create a network growth effect which can potentially skew the graphs on which the theory is based (conclusion : rashomon may become a *super* rental movie for X).

A movie which was relatively lesser know gets watched more because its niche and with time it skews the initial movie rental graphs in its favor.  So the curve changes because the movie gets stocked, so the ability to predict the number of copies for a certain movie becomes way more difficult with time.

Relevant links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail

So i decided to finish off http://dipankar.name and used blueprintcss with web.py as the backend. Very minimilatistic , i will wrap up the “internet asset” section with RSS feeds from the respective networks soon.