Ever since stone-age man first propped up a palm-leaf awning between two commercial mud huts, stuck a fountain in the centre and posted a sign for ‘toilet’ and ‘food court’ next to it, mankind has had malls to go to. A civic space that provides some place for Madame to shop, Sir to ogle, Young Master to gorge and fourteen-year-olds to stand around in groups trying to look cool (and failing en masse to do so).

And, like most things we’ve invented, over the subsequent thousands of years we have been attempting to make ever greater, more elaborate versions of the two-shop-fountain-and-food-court model we know as the shopping mall. Take the great pyramids of Giza, for instance; a quirky design whose unique architecture and indecipherable signage had led to it long being mislabeled as a place of worship, and even a tomb! Well let me tell you, the pyramids now have serious competition.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been to the Dubai Mall, and I have lived to tell the tale -- with pictures!

At the cusp of the 1990s, every home PC had to have one killer app installed. When you’d go round to a friend’s place and they’d show off their new Amstrad or IBM beige behemoth, the first question out of your mouth would be, “How did you convince your parents?” The second would be, “Do you have Prince of Persia?”

Jordan Mechner’s seminal 1989 game (published by Brøderbund) was the high watermark for computer games at the time, a title that combined fluid graphics, exquisite music and challenging gameplay into an astonishing final product. I remember the first time I saw it in 1990, on the PC of one of my parents’ friends. He fired it up for us, to keep us kids busy, I suppose, but I don’t think even he would understand quite the impact the next hour or so of play had on me.

Over the next few days you will hear a lot about Google Chrome, the new web browser from the internet behemoth. I've tested it out and am happy to report that it's quite nice. Of course, I'm a long-time Mozilla Firefox user, so the transition has not been very stark. But if you're one of the poor people who still use Microsoft Internet Explorer (or worse, if until now you didn't even know what a web browser is and that there are mutliple available ones), then Chrome will be a revelation.

Even for me, the new browser is an intriguing new beast. It's very quick, intuitive to use and so far does things well. I can see myself using it for most tasks, at least those that don't require certain firefox plug-ins that I'm used to (but there will no doubt be equivalents for them in Google Chrome eventually), and I'm very happy that there is now a new robust, polished open-source browser. Competition and choice can only lead to better products in this regard.

But as impressive as the browser is, it is not the thing that I really wanted to blog about here. For you see, the most impressive thing about Google Chrome for me today is the fantastic comic that serves as an introduction to it.

The name Scott McCloud should be familiar to most comic book geeks such as myself. The author of seminal works like Understanding Comics has carved a name for himself as true master and expert of the comics medium. Who better to explain a new web browser; an application that's so simple to use it's invisible, but is so complex underneath that entire careers can be dedicated to it? Scott McCloud, of course.

I love how he manages to represent even the most arcane programming concepts in a fun and exciting way (helped, of course, by the words from Google Chrome's programming staff), how there's a single narrative thread but multiple voices from members of the team -- this is a feat you can't really achieve as well in video, for instance, but as a comic it works great. Alan Moore has always maintained that comics as a medium are rich beyond measure, that there are things you can do in it that you can't do in a movie or a book. I can think of several examples of Moore's own work to support this, but Scott McCloud's introduction to Google Chrome is a shining example too.

So even if you don't give Google Chrome a spin (I highly recommend you do), please do check out the comic that goes with it. It's simply superb.

The last time I updated the Work page was probably sometime in 2005. This was back when the site was still on free hosting and looked all grey and lime green.

Yeah, it's been a long time. Quite a bit has happened since then, not least of which is this redesign. I've always wanted to redo the work page, make it richer and more than just a bunch of images, but then I realised that while I was putting that off for the right time (it would be a good deal of work), two years had gone by.

So, I bit the bullet, sorted through my work and came up with a bunch of stuff -- some of which has been posted on the journal before -- but much of which is new. So surf on over to the work page and have a look around. There's about 30 new things in the Design and Illustration sections. I haven't added anything to photos yet, and might do so in the coming weeks.

V

Over the past five years I've been amassing an eclectic collection of cheap used books on my trips to Bombay. At Rs.10 apiece (around $0.25 US) they aren't expensive or significant (most of them are, in fact, the very opposite), but they are valuable to me, insomuch as they are weird -- and I love weird. I have read very few of them; Of the hundreds (and by now, thousands), I have only finished a handful. There have been plans ever since I started blogging to talk about them, to read and review them, but this has so far not happened.

I was reminded of this recently when Dan blogged about his bookshelf, and in the comments I lamented that most of my books were in boxes (he suggested I just take a picture of the box). "That's it," I said to myself, "enough dawdling!" I looked through a small box of them and chose seven -- none of which I have read -- but which I think are interesting. Maybe this will give me the impetus to actually read some, but for now I will talk of their weird and wonderful subjects, their pretty and often breathtaking covers, and their all-round coolness. I hope you find them as fun as I do.

Well, folks, less than 24 hours to go before Comic Konga! begins! I hope you're excited and if you're participating, I hope you've got a bunch of ideas (or better yet, finished comics) already! Truth be told I haven't begun work on my finished comics yet. I do have a few of the ideas chalked out and I know what tomorrow's comic will be... now I just have to do it!

In case you feel so inclined to announce your Comic Konga! participation on your blogs, I've provided a couple of versions of the logo for you to use:

The one on the left is a transparent background PNG, 240x240. On the right is a GIF of the same dimensions with a white background. Feel free to right click and 'Save as...' (or your browser's equivalent) and put it up in your site's sidebar or into your Comic Konga! posts. Feel free to resample or resize it to fit your blog (I kept it large so that it would shrink down well).

Comic Konga! Logo (Plain SVG version)

If you like, I've provided a plain SVG version of the logo. You can use Inkscape to view it, but I think even other programs like new versions of Adobe Illustrator support this vector file standard. With the vector version you can export the image at higher (or lower) resolutions, or even put the logo into the comics themselves.

In case there were any doubts, you can begin to post your comics whenever Monday is in your timezone. Just putup one every day until Friday. I'll also be collecting links to all the participants's daily entries the next day(so Monday's comic will be collected on Tuesday afternoon GMT), and of course there will be a final list of links after Comic Konga concludes on Friday, 02 November.

I encourage all of you to check out the other entries; to comment on, link to and pick your favourites. Mostly, don't be disheartedned if you haven't begun... there's still a while to go and a great comic doesn't need to worked on forever.

Good luck!

So the other day, in the comments section of The Future of Human Transportation, Spyder challenged me (and others) to a 'comic-off' -- a comics festival of sorts. We'd each do five comics over five days. I accepted of course, but work -- o wonderfully banal, low paying work! -- reared its head and I couldn't jump right into it. I figure this is a blessing in disguise for us as well as you, dear reader(s).

Being the delusional brandsmith that I am, I figured an august venture such as this should have its own silly name and stupid logo, so I rechristened it Comic Konga!... um, that's the second name I though of (Comic Orgy is something I'm reserving for another time, hehe). Read on for more astounding details!

After months of slacking off, I finally got round to doing something I should have done way back in March: I've redesigned the site's look!

When I switched over to Drupal I used the Minnelli template, a default template that comes with the program. Don't get me wrong, it's a very nice and functional template, but being a graphic designer and using a standard template on my own site is a bit... well, shameful.

My mother let me draw on walls. It was 1986, I was three, and we were living in a one bedroom apartment in Ghusais, back when there was nothing there except for a block of already decrepit government flats, Al Mulla Plaza (closed because of a border dispute), and a procession of electrical towers between there and Sharjah.

She got a lot of flack for it, of course. Neighbours would come round and wonder why on earth I was still alive after such a heinous crime, and then look worryingly at their own children as the young ones gaped at the sheer audacity of the red and green scrawls, their eyes luminous with the shock of seeing freedom, tolerance and understanding -- and of course, whimsy -- for perhaps the first time in their fragile lives. Several adults vowed never to bring their children into contact with my parents, not the first and certainly not the last time that was said to them.

The rationale my mother offered -- since the simple truth of "Why not?" was far too much for others to bear -- was that since it was a rental, once we moved out the landlord would paint it for the next tenant anyway as per the local norm; if the landlord objected, she was gladly willing to pay for the painting herself. They never objected, but I would have liked to see the look on whoever came to that apartment after we had gone. The building itself was torn down sometime in the 90s to make way for a compound of houses.

It was the only place I ever drew on the walls, and even I am not sure why exactly. The rationale to my three-year-old self probably had something to do with not wanting to waste paper, and the fact that if I drew straight on the walls it would forego entirely the costly and time-consuming framing and hanging processes.

Mostly I just wanted to draw, and my parents wanted great art on the walls, for which I gladly obliged.

The other day I finally bothered to buy an optical mouse again. The old one had gone wonky and had been replaced, for a few months, with a ball one. While installing it I suddenly realised that the little graphics tablet attached to my work computer -- hidden beneath a pile of well-intentioned clutter -- was indeed working. Samir had fixed whatever byzantine driver issues were afflicting it, and in typical Samir fashion had now forgotten quite how he did it and when it had happened (btw, have you checked out his spiffy new blog and site?). With another hour to go before The Simpsons, I decided to give it and the new mouse a whirl.