Shooting Star–Photoshop Walkthrough Tutorial

In this tutorial you will hopefully be able to make a shooting star without using the default resources present in Photoshop CS 2-4. The tutorial requires basic to intermediate level of Photoshop skill and you should know how to get around the software and use its tools.

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the Guide & the entourage)

Prologue

It was another evening at the cafeteria of NUST, the weather unusually pleasant and windy, the six of us sitting outside the main cafeteria building under the shades where mostly you will find love birds doing what they do best, talking aimlessly and endlessly about nothing. We were on our usual meal, i.e. a Samosa and a cup of Tea before calling it off. There were people to be seen in the backdrop[The Girls Hostel Roof], walking in an invisible loop – probably busy on the phone, while others just standing and waiting for their phones to ring. As the weather was clear, an idea spurred on the table of going on road trip in the upcoming summer holidays, and this is where it all began.

Unconventional Naming @ NUST

NUST in all its mightiness is now compared with the universities all over the world. There are accomplishments of the university in different areas of Engineering, Medical and Humanities which are a matter of pride for its students all over Pakistan. However keeping all the glitter aside there are some policies and conventions followed here which I have failed to comprehend – Stress on “I have failed”, NUST is always right – . One of them being the naming convention for buildings and the roads. I went on a survey to find as many boards I could in H-12, I came up with the following:

1. Scholars Avenue
2. Innovation Drive
3. Khyber Road
4. Luqman Avenue
5. Bolan Road
6. Indus Loop
7. Iqbal Square [Its not even a square it’s a round about]

I don’t know what is the point of giving heterogeneous names to the roads. Either they could have had named them according to the places in Pakistan or they could have had altogether English names or names of prominent Pakistanis , but they should have followed one convention. Best solution would have been to assign numbers to the roads. In Islamabad all of the sectors have been divided nicely and systematically, we could have had a similar system. Considering from view of someone who is not accustomed to H-12 it would be very very confusing to get around the sector and find places.

Also In my search for all the road signs I noticed another anomaly in naming of the institutes and the names assigned to their buildings. For example the name of the building in which SEECS has set up, is known as Al-Kindi Block, likewise there are names for all the buildings in NUST which correspond to famous Muslims Scholars – Notice Roomi , Ghazali, Fatima, Iqra and Isra  Hostels. Why not call the campuses by their names?

The heterogeneity doesn’t end here, there are three kinds of campuses at NUST:

• Schools [SCME, SEECS, SCEE, NBS, SMME……]
• Centers [CAMP, NCVI, RCMS,….]
• Institutes [NICE, NIT, IGIS, IESE, RIMMS] 
• Colleges – Since all of them reside out of H-12 so we don’t include them here

I was wondering why in the name of heavens would anybody make it so confusing? What is the status of Schools and Institutes? Is there a hierarchy ? or a nomenclature? Why not make every campus a “school” or an “institute”.

I thought Intel was the only one that used to confuse people with its series of products but we have even bigger candidates in this regard.

In the end is NUST-HQ building called “Rector” [Question Mark] ?

The Hit List

There is strange thing about failure, you only get to know it’s a failure if you try something and it fails. Same thing happens in Pakistan, the difference is after realizing failure an honest man would step out of power if he thinks he is not up to a job but Alas, not many men in the upper echelons of the country are honest. To me dishonesty to the country is an act of rebellion against it, and thus should be treated as an act of high treason.

Now seeing the situation in which my dear country is entrapped there is one solution to the problem. To get rid of dishonest people. Dishonesty can be easily seen, as now we have “active media”, take out any archives, these people never change the loyalties to people in power. The difference is only that the people in power keep changing [also known as Lotacracy].

You might have noticed that the ruling lot is never wealthy before they straighten their loyalty to power and after five years, they roam about the cities in Land Rovers. Probably they don’t understand the constitution very well and take the phrase “enjoy the power” as something to take full advantage of in personal interest. Lack of education is eminent among these people as they first of all don’t understand the constitution, they don’t have evidence to prove their education and most of all they don’t talk like literate people. Funny part is people knowing all of these fact still elect  them, but considering the voting ratio in our country I think the whole election scape is an eyewash. Just a big bluff in the faces of [media]informed people for the sake of ‘loyalty to power’. How ironic!

A good riddance would be to kill all the fat bellies and seize their property alternatively jail them on an irrevocable order. You might be wondering about the topic of this post, have you seen the movie by the same name? if you don’t than you should see that. The following is my hit list if and only if the People of Pakistan somehow realize the fool that has been made of them for over sixty years.

The list goes as follows:

• Mr. Asif Ali Zardari
• Mr. Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif
• Mr Mian Muhammad Shabaz Sharif
• Mr. Jehangir Badar
• Mr. Syed Qaim Ali Shah
• Mr. Chaudhary Pervaiz Elahi
• Mr. Bashir Balor and his brother
• Mr. Bugti and Family
• Mrs. Firdaous Ashiq Awan

I don’t know names of more scoundrels sitting in the National Assembly but I am sure the list goes to couple of hundreds. I may add more people to the list, maybe.

Water Poisoner

It has been an unfortunate week for me as this is going to be my second pessimist post on NUST. Ever since we came here at H-12, there have been many problems with the campus setup. Don’t take it as I wanted everything to be spick and span, i was actually very content by whatever we had. Anyways there is a settling time for an installment that is newly built, also people need to get adapted to a new environment, therefore there is a valid point to refrain from complaining after shifting to a new place. The matters get worse when ignorance comes into the scene.

From Left to right: A clean water filter | Fungus Laden Filter at NBS cafe | A dirty sand filter

Before coming to the main point let’s get a little educated about the topic.

NUST has been equipped with water filters throughout the campus. Each of these filters consists of three phases, sand filter, resin softener and UV module. Sand/Sediment filter is supposed to keep the sand particles out; it is made up of sheets of paper, bound together to make a micro filter. These filters come in different thresholds, ranging from 5microns to 0.1 microns; lower the better. The price ranges from 300 to 3000Rs. A filter wears out in around 6 months of usage or when the sand particles have penetrated to the inner most layers.

The second portion is resin filter, it softens up the water. Upon my visit to a company’s office I came to know that it comes in only two qualities in market and costs around 300Rs a piece.

The third portion is UV filter and is responsible for killing microorganisms. It has to be switch on five minutes before normal operation to get effective results.

It’s here to be noted that these filters cannot be cleaned, they have to be replaced. At SEECS they tried to wash them but it yielded in polluting the water with soap. Hence some of them were replaced.

Now that you aren’t novice about filters lets come to the point. The filters employed at NUST have either never been replaced or substantial since their last replacement. Instead of cleaning the water enormous amounts of fungus and algae are poisoning the drinking water. This green ‘substance’ is visible in both the portions of the filters and God knows what might have grown in the third one because its covering is usually opaque. The fungus inside is responsible for spreading different water borne diseases very conveniently. Nobody has bothered replacing those filters when companies offer free service for their replacements and charge only for the additional filter cost which on the lower end never exceeds 600Rs. Whenever we come to the cafe after exhausting ourselves in the playground all there is to see is the fungus filled filters. Disgusted, we are forced to keep our thirst .

It’s strange that the staff doesn’t bother about such things and don’t report it to the higher authorities. We as a nation work only under unusual circumstances or trauma. In normal situations nobody really seems to care, oblivious to the fact that they might prevent adverse effect of something.

Keep on drinking polluted water.