Hello, and welcome to my site called The Reasoner. My name is Bes Zain. I currently live in California where I spend the days exploring nature and people. I read, write, observe, and take pictures mostly for this site and for some specific interests in life.

What is this page about?

This is my “About” page which tells you more personal details about myself. This will also probably be the only page on the site where words like “my”, “me”, “myself” and of course “I” will all be used together excessively, innocently of course, more than most of the other words.

My main focus for this site is to share analysis and reasons behind different business, social, cultural and personal trends that affect individuals and communities and communication between all these elements.

If one sentence could summarize most of the posts of this blog, the following would be it. An analysis of the world culture and the consumer culture by an individual living in the United States, by writing about it in blog style.

You may see some prominent links to other on this site; many of these people are friends I know in person, and others are friends I know online. Some of the links point to web sites that I simply visit on a regular basis, because of the quality of the content on their sites and things I learn from such site authors.

A short summary list

A short summary of personal statistics:

• About me : What can I say? I’m me.
• Location : Northern California - Bay Area
• Occupation : Preparing for a Master’s at this moment. Available for hire.
• Sex : I don’t even know you…
• No! sex : No!
• No no no! Male or female!? : Oh, male, sorry.
• Aim? : My aim is to dominate my part of the state, and then move on to controlling all the squirrels in surrounding counties to create an army of squirrel slaves!
• NO! Your AOL AIM!! : Ohh, hmmm, that’s on the contact page.
• Yahoo? : Yippeee!
• No no no no no! What is your YAHOO IM id? : Hmmm, you have to be more specific. Details on that also on the contact page.
• Specialty : Among other things, business/corporate, cultural trends and behavior, communication, use of technology to affect business, cultural and social trends, and behavior.

This site is like an editorial section of what I observe in real life and online.

I write for a couple of online sites and I also manage a couple of sites for a few people. One of my main other sites is Eyeography.

I am currently available for writing projects. Please contact me with what you have in mind, and I will do my best to see if we can come to an arrangement where I write for you.

The code behind this site

At the moment, most, of the site has been hand coded in PHP. I now use WordPress to power the site. Before that, I used Nucleus CMS on this site for almost 5 years. I use QBullets from time to time throughout the site for easier navigation and easier to understand interactive content. I also prefer using the simple icons created by Mark James at famfamfam.

Images on this site

All the images, services, content and more on this site are copyrighted by their respective owners, including myself for all the content and ideas I have written, and the pictures I have taken and created, or edited or worked on, or even put on the site, and everything else on the site. Many of the reviews of movies and books on this site rely on images provided by Amazon [Amazon allows direct linking to images]. If there are no such images available, for a book for example, I will scan the book myself and use the scanned image as a picture. You are not advised to link to images directly on this site; you can go to Amazon.com and save the images from there or link to images from there. Just because I am capable of sponsoring big bills does not mean I can afford to sponsor hot-linkers and everyone and everything else. If you really want to steal, go to 7-11 and try your luck there. They have really good collection of candies and Starbucks coffee near the milk/frozen area. If you really cannot afford to save images on your site or do not know how to save images or link to images from Amazon, email me and I will try my best to explain how or try to offer you some advise and links for places where you can get free hosting [and linking] for your images. Linking to pictures on this site directly without my written permission will result in very severe consequences, including you being ashamed in front of the mirror everyday knowing that what you did was no better than stealing a candy from the store, which may have been fun in the 80’s or the 90’s, I agree. Linking is not as much fun though. It takes a lot of resources to do anything in life, including having thoughts on what to do and whether it’s productive to do something or just sleep all day. This site is no different; it takes a lot of brain power [mine] to run this site, and it takes resources from this precious earth to keep this site running.

The entire content on this site

I spend hours on almost every article, sometimes more than 30 minutes on a small piece of writing just to make sure that it is written in a way that is easy to understand, and most important of all, effective at sending the message that I want to send to you, the reader. Therefore, if you find any article that’s confusing or if you have any questions about it, please email me and I will give you credit for the changes I make.

This site should be viewable in all browsers

This site should be viewable in all browsers, on all operating systems, and on most of the monitor resolutions. I have tested this site extensively in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. As convenient as it would be for me to say that this site works best in a certain browser and that you should download that certain browser, I believe that you, the user and the reader, should and must have the luxury and power of having your own preferences, just like I would like to have my own when I am a user and a reader on another site [try the standard Firefox on http://www.windowsupdate.com as of January 2007]. Therefore, if you come across any issues viewing this site in a particular browser or an environment, please e-mail me and I will try to fix the issue.

Background of this site

No animals were tested or used in the production of this site. This site is a work in progress all the time, just as many sites should be. Overall, I have had this domain since around the latter part of the summer or fall of 2001, if memory serves me correctly. The site started simply as a place for me to talk about things, almost everything that came to my mind. The site went through several changes in 2002, and simply went a bit on an unexpected and forced “vacations” around that time. The site picked up fresh with better force from the dusk of 2003.

The current layout of the site is my modified version of the original layout by Nurudin Jauhari.

How I advertise on this site

I am still debating over the use of advertisements on this site. At this moment, almost every link to an Amazon.com product on this site contains my Amazon.com referral id. This helps me earn a commission on any customers I send to Amazon. You get the same prices on their site, and I get to make a small amount of money if you purchase something on their site, for which I thank you. At this moment, I may be showing Text-Link-Ads in some posts.

How you can use my work

If you wish to print any article or use something through crediting me as being the author, please contact me. Please read the copyright for more information. Any article can be republished only when you have my permission, the article is linked back directly to this site and credit is given to “Bes Z” in the article. Many prints for the pictures on this site are available for purchase as post cards. Post cards are available in two sizes; 4×8″ cards are available for $1, and 5×7″ cards are available for $1.50. Shipping is $1 to anywhere in the United States, and $4 anywhere else in the world. Payments can be made through Paypal by sending Paypal payments or via a credit card [please contact me with the name of the picture you wish to buy, so that I can send you a secure URL payment to make the purchase through a credit card or Paypal, depending on your preference].

Thank you for coming to my site!

Thank you for visiting my site. I really appreciate it.