On behalf of me, my brothers blogging on JordanFirst.com, and all proud Jordanians, I’d like to wish our beloved King a happy birthday, which happens to be on the 30th of January. We wish you a long and a blessed life, continuous success and progress for Jordan.

I’d also like to present to all of JordanFirst.com readers, this high resolution scanned poster photo of our beloved King Abdullah II courtesy of Al-Ghad Newspaper.

Download the poster here

Something that I thought was worth blogging about is my cousin’s, Khaled Abu Ain’s graduation project for Graphic Design at Philadelphia University, under supervision by Dr. Eyad Alsaker, Professor Mohammad AbdulAl, Dr. Bashar Mardini, Faisal Al Omari, and Dr. Ziad Haddad. The project consists of a whole theme and logo redesign of Jordan TV. Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, and After Effects were programs that Khaled used through-out his design process.

Before you read my feedback below, I think you should watch the streaming Real Player video of Jordan TV running under the new theme and logo which were used with permission, and for those who have dialup, I’ve put up some screens showing the theme and logo he designed.

High-resolution streaming video (Real Player)

Low-resolution streaming video (Real Player)

Images:

Now, while the new theme and logo are definitely much better than Jordan TV’s current too blue theme and logo; better as in more modern, give it the more character that its supposed to have, it still feels too much Royal Jordanian to me, probably because of the red and golden colors along with the Royal crown. Though, Khaled has done a really great job, I’d like to tell him Congratulations in advance for graduating next semister and good luck with the presentation.

** P.S. This is just a graduation project, and not Jordan TV’s official theme nor logo.

Part 2… After printing the documents folder, the outcome was pretty neat. It feels really great as a designer to see your own design on print. I’ve taken some shots of the folder from all different views so you can see what it looked like.

Let me know what you think once more

Wish me luck on 24/1, that’s when I’ll present the folder to the design jury at uni.

Finally, after nearly 5 hours of continuous concentration on finishing my final project, which by the way I was supposed to turn in at uni . on 5th of January, my design for a documents folder is ready for print : ) The subject I picked for my design was Adobe, no better way to show gratitude to the makers of Photoshop and Illustrator.

Constructive criticism is encouraged, please let me know what you think.

Now wish me luck with the doc’s score, for she said that first year students who design their folders “on the computer” and not manually with poster colors, will most likely be penalized due to the high probability that they have had someone else design their folder for them, just how fair is that?

Not everybody enjoy the art of relaxation. Relaxing the body is a hard technique but a fruitful one if done well & what it needs mostly is persistent exercise. I believe that for mostly everyone, persistence is the core of achieving. If someone could stick to his plans and never surrender to laziness & delay, he should be on the path to success. Personally, I’ve tried getting used to go to the gym 5 times a week. At first, it was so difficult to adapt, but when I got used to it, it was a great daily experience. The worst common part that happened with me was when I needed to stop going to the gym for a day or two, which later became a week, and ultimately I stopped going to the gym.

The article below is taken from a new blog which focuses mostly about body and mind relaxation.

* While sitting quietly and comfortably, slowly inhale and exhale and close your eyes as you do so.
* Bend your right hand back at the wrist and briefly hold the tension. Now relax.
* Now do the same thing with the left hand. Hold the tension and now relax.
* This time tighten both hands into fists and hold the tension. Feel it spread up the arms towards the elbows. Now relax.
* Now bend both arms at the elbows and raise your hands up towards your shoulders. Tighten up the muscles in the biceps. Hold it. Now relax.
* These three exercises have used the major muscles in the arms and started them relaxing.
* If you don’t move them around, they will continue to relax becoming more and more relaxed, and you can forget about them
* Next, turn your attention to your face. For your forehead raise your eyebrows up a far as you can and hold the tension. Now relax.
* For your eyes, squeeze the eyelids tightly together. Hold the tension. Now relax.
* For your jaw you just bite down and clamp your teeth together. Feel the tension along the jaw. Now relax. These three exercises have started the face relaxing.
* For your neck just bend your head forward as if trying to touch your chin to your chest. Feel the tension along the back of the neck and now relax.
* For your shoulders just raise them up as high as you can and notice the tension. Now let them drop all at once and relax.
* For your chest you do two things at once. Take a deep breath and hold it while at the same time trying to touch your shoulder blades together by pulling your arms back. Hold it. Now relax.
* For your stomach you just pull in as if trying to touch your backbone with stomach. Now relax.
* For your back you arch out and away from the chair, and you can feel tension along the spine. Now relax.With your feet flat on the floor, press down and feel the tension spread up the back of the legs. Now relax.
* For the right thigh raise your leg up on front of you and feel the tension build. Now relax.
Now do the same thing with the left leg and relax.
* Finally, for your feet bend your toes up as if pointing towards the ceiling and feel the tension around the feet and ankles. Once again, relax

Source: Relax Body

I am sure this would be helpful for a lot of people. I dedicate this post to everyone who would like to read JORDANFIRST.com in a different language. Please click on the language below to open the new translated page.

Please note that this translation provided by Altavista Babelfish is not necessarily accurate, due to translation done word by word. It is also worth mentioning that these translation services will not work from within the UAE, and that because the ETISALAT ISP is blocking most of translation services. I think they believe this would help translation offices in UAE!!

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Most of us would love to know when new technologies are born, specially in this technology madness era we’re living. As soon we hear about a new product, another more advanced one is already in queue.
Nano and Cost Reduction technologies were the hottest trends due to their effects in shaping the economy of today’s industries. A good example I could give about the effects of cost reduction are 42″ LCD/Plasma screens, they were for around 9000 JOD 2 years ago, but now they’re only for about 2000 JOD. Nano technology is the industry of creating micro or nano sized products with the full functionality of normal ones. Which almost always benefits at least so many sectors, including medicine and agriculture… etc.

This week in Las Vegas, the CES 2006 Exhibition is all about newly created tech. products, most of them of course with patents. Enjoy browsing here.

The Consumer Electronics Show Website

After 37 years of marketing Intel’s logo(shown above), Intel reveals their new logo(shown below) to the world.

A question you might ask yourself is why would such a huge company like Intel with such a world-wide known brand logo would do that? Well, that depends on the way you think about it. The answer to that question might as well be another question, what does Intel logo mean to you as a consumer? When you see Intel’s logo anywhere you immediately think of Intel CPUs. After 37 years of branding that logo on various computer chipset products, those products had become what Intel logo means to us. Judging from an interview with Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO, they want to expand that image in our minds to include Intel’s new consumer products, which requires a new logo for Intel.

“The world’s biggest chipmaker said on Thursday it will scrap its 37-year-old logo and well-known tagline as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize its shift away from its core PC business and into consumer products. The original Intel logo featuring a lowered ‘e’ will be replaced with one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company’s name.”

Let me start off with a Happy New Year to all Jordanians! While 2005 was a sad year indeed in which many tragedies occured, and left us with little hope of a better tomorrow, yesterday I saw lots of optimistic Jordanians in the streets partying some in their cars, some dancing “dabkeh” and others were simply happy, each one of us expressed their hope for things to get better in 2006. May God make 2006 a year full of happiness and joy for all of us, enjoy!