Weblog of A Designer

My Visual Art Blogalleria is one of my favorite personal Blog projects that I have initiated in the beginning of 2006, the time when I started thinking about various possibilities of a Blog and looking for different ways to use blogging as an effective tool to build a credible web presence. I coined the word ‘Blogalleria’ joining ‘Blog’ and ‘Galleria’ together, to establish this blog’s identity as ‘an on-line art gallery created using a blog’ and also, ‘a blog in form of an art gallery’. For last two years, I have been posting my personal as well as non-commercial graphics, photographs, photographics, illustrations, paintings and sketches on this Visual Art Blogalleria and it has become a public archive of my personal as well as other non-commercial artworks.

Recently, I have overhauled this Blogalleria, changed its look and feel and the sidebar content, added lots of new exhibits and items and tried to establish better interactions with my other web-based public initiatives. I am quite excited about it to see how this change affects the visitors of the site.

There was another parallel thought process brewing in my mind, when I was revamping this Blogalleria. Being a designer, I usually believe in eternal design truths, like “a dark text on light background is easier to read”. But, since I stumbled upon two interesting posts on green computing and black google by Mark Ontkush on ecoiron.blogspot.com, almost a year back, I have started thinking about Mark’s argument and since then, I have been following his blog and hist posts regularly. His argument is based on the fact that, “a given monitor (CRT) requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen” and derives a conclusion that says, websites with black background save a minuscule amount of energy, each time opened in a CRT Monitor.

Inspired by Mark’s idea, this time I have decided to change the background color to Black and to use Black as much as possible instead of any other lighter color on flat areas of the site. This effectively means that whenever someone will open any page of this Blogalleria in a CRT monitor, he/she will save a little amount of energy. A small step towards saving energy, saving earth.

Boipara.com - The Online Archive of Bengali Literature, E-books and Little Magazines, is proud to release their title song - The Song Of Boipara (Boiparar Gaan) 
Download The song of Boipapra (Boiparar Gaan) here

The song is written, composed and sung by young and talented Bengali lyricist, singer and poet - Anupam Roy. This song talks about the poet’s feelings about Boipara.com.

Listen to Anupam’s Bengali Songs here
http://www.myspace.com/anupamroy

Listen to SONG OF BOIPARA (Boiparar Gaan) here

• Add Boipara.com at Orkut.com
• Add Boipara.com at eSnips
• Visit Boipara.com
• Visit Boiparar Blogpara

Boipara.com - Online Archive of Bangla Literature has launched a blog as an extension of their effort to archive non-mainstream Bangla literature and little magazines on Internet and make these rare and marginalized literary works accessible to everyone. This extended archive is called Boiparar Blogpara - A Bengali Literature Archive Blog and can be accessed at following location:

http://boipara.blogspot.com

Few important archived materials on this Bangla Literature Archive Blog:

• Bangla Poems of Falguni Roy
• Short Story of Amiyabhushan Majumdar
• Biography of Sandipan Chattopadhyay (part)
• Writings and Portraits: Works of Hiran Mitra

Boipara, being the first and probably the most viewed online Bengali Literature Archive, focusing on Bengali Little Magazines and marginalized literature, is constantly putting their effort to add more and more content to the archive. This Bangla Literature Archive Blog [http://boipara.blogspot.com] is a new initiative taken by Boipara.com as a part of their endless effort to make alternative Bengali Literature and Little Magazines available and accessible to everyone and anyone.

I have started writing a series of articles on how to set up a healthy planted aquarium and other various useful tips in my Nature Aquarium Blog. The second post of this Planted Aquarium Tips series has been just added on my Nature Aquarium Blog and it deals with the pros and cons of pruning the plants in your aquarium. The first post of this Planted Aquarium Tips series was on the ideal substrate for a planted tank and the post can be viewed here. I have been getting positive responses and encouraging notes from the readers, since I started this Nature Aquarium Blog. It seems that serious aquarium hobbyists from various corners of the world are finding this Nature Aquarium Blog and the photographs and information, helpful. This is the reason why I try to bring out little time from my daily schedule to update my Nature Aquarium Blog with information and experiences I have gathered in past years as a serious aquarist.

Internet, being the best resource for virtually any subject under the sun, is also a great resource for aquarium hobbyists. People have been sharing their knowledge and experiences with others on various online forums and communities for years. These forums, like the Krib, fins.actwin.com, IAH, Aquatic Plant Central etc are now being considered as the most valuable online resource for aquarium and fish keeping.

After almost 6 months or more, I have started a new aquascape project, in my 28 gl tank. This tank was lying empty with few home-bred guppies, occasional oddballs, dumped plants and all other extra props, since I ripped off my Malawi Cichlid set up. The tank was almost like a dingy, cluttered store room, with a dark and gloomy air around it. When I shifted to my new apartment around 2 months back, I decided to reset this tank and create a mixed planted set up with Harlequin Rasboras at the mid level, Few Kuhli Loaches and Paki Loaches and a lonely red Betta, as the accent item. I decided, not to use any new expensive and exotic plants in this set up, rather I tried to stick to the specimens that I already had with me in my other tanks. I named it ‘Alone in the Forest’. The tank is almost 2 months old and quite steady now; growing everyday and moving towards its maturity.

More images of this set up »

• Front (Full) »
• Front (Parts) »
• During Planting »

My other aquascapes and nature aquariums can be viewed at following locations:

• My Flickr Album of Creative Aquascapes and Nature Aquarium
• My Creative Aquascapes and Nature Aquarium Blog
• My Picasa Web Album of Creative Aquascapes and Nature Aquarium
• An article on Creative Aquascaping

Yes. I have started another Wordpress blog. Surely, I am getting infected by the infamous “MBS” or “Multi Blog Syndrome”! My earlier Wordpress blog - SamitOnline.net will be there and I am making it an Unicode Bengali Blog! also, I am planning to move all English articles from SamitOnline.net to this blog - Samitroy.org. This blog at Samitroy.org is going to be my main English blog, as well as my personal resource portal, while SamitOnline.net will be my Unicode Bengali Blog.

I will be working on this Blog for next few days, trying to customize this template, define the content outline and Information Architecture, change the graphics and personalize the color scheme. I will be transfering posts from SamitOnline.net to this one, too.