DMITRIYASEEV

Primitive “Similar Articles” Feature for WP

Recently I wrote a PHP snippet for one of my WordPress projects, which suggests readers to find more articles on the same topic. It is sort of primitive “similar articles” plug-in which you have to control manually by specifying a keyword. It is useful when you don’t need a list of similar article titles under every post, in fact, those could be not so similar, but when you want to indicate within key pages that there is more important information on the same subject in your blog. Specifying the keyword allows you to display precisely those articles that you would like to be read by visitors. Continue reading…

Advertising Without an Axe to Grind

I made a discovery – Google Translate interprets idiomatic expressions. I mean, not word to word as some other applications, but it finds analogs in the language in which the text is translated. For example, the Russian saying, “Делать из мухи слона (Make an elephant out of a fly)” will be converted to a familiar to English speakers phrase with the same meaning, “Make a mountain out of a molehill” or another one, “Заблудиться в трёх соснах (Lost in three pine trees)” will become, “Lost in broad daylight.”

Some ideas can be expressed deeper and more clearly with help of idiomatic expressions. Idioms are acquired gradually throughout childhood and adulthood and can’t be quickly absorbed by adults who started learning, in this case, English as a second language. This feature is extremely useful for such people, including myself.

February NYC Web Design Meetup

In the evening of February 28th the event started with a presentation held by Khoi Vinh, a user experience designer, writer and speaker, who spoke about the online news industry and web design tendencies. This part I liked the most, although, at the end of allotted time, Khoi Vinh ran out of time and had to skip some parts which, judging by the slide titles, I found interesting. The second part was dedicated to website design critique by a panel of designers. At the end we supposed to open network and socialize, but I was hungry and had no energy for that. Overall I liked the meeting and planning to go there again (and socialize).

P.S. The NYC Web Design Group constantly looking for presenters, so if you have a topic you’d like to present, or a website you’d like to have critiqued, or just looking to network with others in the web design industry, please find more information here.

Art Project, powered by Google

I’ve opened for myself another project from the corporation I like. Art Project, powered by Google, lets one to explore museums with Street View technology and virtually move around a museum and view some artworks in high resolution. Now you can be a highly cultured man without changing out of your sweatpants. >>

I’ve finished illustrating my children’s book

I’ve finished illustrating my children’s book. Soon I will put some illustrations here. The book, “Raymond likes to read, do you?” is a story about a rabbit who thought that reading isn’t important.

Pinocchio

I just found this collage in my archives which I made a few years ago. I don’t remember showing it to anybody and I forgot that I’ve made it.
I call it Pinocchio. If I hadn’t come across the disc, Pinocchio would have sunk into oblivion.
This metamorphosis of a mannequin into a man was made in Photoshop by retouching photos of real people or by painting in some areas. This image doesn’t have a specific purpose – it is just to make one smile, or shudder, or…

Bigger picture you can see here.

New flyer design for J. Premier Marketing

New flyer design for J. Premier Marketing, Inc. Among other services, the company offers cruises around Manhattan and this particular flyer promotes a cruise on Halloween night.
Continue reading…

Gradient Transparency in Illustrator

Video Tutorial: How to Make a Gradient Transparency in Illustrator
This video shows three methods of creating a gradient to “nothing” in Adobe Illustrator (the methods are; blending modes, “Fade to Black” which is a function implemented in CS4, and using opacity masks). There is another way of creating transparent gradients by blends (different from blending modes), but I’ve decided to not include it in this video. It will be a separate one.
Continue reading…

My Personal Punch-Clock

This small application I’ve created a long time ago for my personal use and later I published information about it in my old blog. Some people found it useful, so I’ve decided to republish it.

My Personal Punch-Clock is time management software for freelancers that helps to track time spent on projects. This software wasn’t created to compete with commercial versions with lots of features. What singles it out is its total simplicity. In addition, it’s absolutely free.
It runs under Windows only and I don’t plan to develop a Mac OS version (don’t know how). Doesn’t require installation. Download

Hello Again, World!

I’ve decided to renew my blogging commitments and soon here will be something much more useful than this post. Unfortunately all the old entries are gone.