JTB and Niseko Balloon

To my surprise a photo I took a few years ago and then gave to the new buyer of Niseko Balloon out in Annupuri has made the cover of the JTB summer brochure.

Niseko Balloon is now going into its third season, the first season they flew their balloon at Sun Sports Playing Fields in Hirafu and then moved out to Annupuri after acquiring the Annupuri Balloon from the previous owner.

Check out the JTB brochure and the and a couple of original photos below.

niseko balloon

niseko balloon

balloon konbu yama

testing typekit

Thought that it would be good to test Type Kit as lots of people in the past have wanted to have a non web compliant font on their website! Well now you can and for free to test, so head over to typekit or contact us to get different fonts on your page.

I tested “orgovan-rounded-web” and “metalista-web” and I experimented with using the CSS selectors and also using CSS rules in the style sheet to play around with setting the size of the font. Also notice the little badge down there that you have to have if you use the free account.

All in all the process was fairly painless once I worked out that you need to use both font-family values otherwise you may end up with a bit of a mess, like this “Hickle-Dee-Pickle-Dee”*) :) HAVE FUN!

Data or Performance Driven Design

As more and more web designers adopt  web standards for making web sites and web standards come the norm across the industry the focus of web design development will turn more to Data or Performance based design. Check out Luke Stevens interview on Data Driven Design. Definitely worth a read for web designers and for someone looking at hiring a web professional.

The Cone of Uncertainty

think these are worth a read if you are about to embark on building a system

Agile Estimation and the Cone of Uncertainty
The Mysterious Cone of Uncertainty
Software Estimation and the Cone of Uncertainty

Live feed art?

onedotzero – identity application teaser from onedotzero on Vimeo.

Another Reason to Support Open Source

Open Source is hot right now, but really what does it mean? I think that when talking about using open source there are many factors involved from it is not always economical, it doesn’t quite fit your application, to it will work as long as we invest time in it. Very rarely does an open source application fit the bill perfectly, however it is good in many ways from pushing big corporations to continually evolve to allowing small busy equal opportunity with fast evolving technology.

I recommend the two articles below to get a better idea about open source.

why open source will never rule the desktop and why it doesnt matter
linux is important but will never be mainstream

Software Freedom Day

The 19th of September 2009 was Software Freedom Day(SFD) around the world. It was a day that promoted Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and how high quality FOSS should be used in government, education, in the the office and at home. I found the Software Freedom Day site about 2 days before the day and started The Hokkaido Initiative the day before SFD and had all good intentions to mail out to people I know to let them know about the day, that did not happen but this blog is the first step to let people know that I as a web designer using open source software am right behind making people aware of the benefits of open source. If you would like join the group and help out in the 2010 day please get in touch by adding a comment below.