Latest Articles

Apple new look

. Web Design

Today, I go to the Apple website, and found out the site look and feel is a bit different. Woot! The famous glossy Apple style navigation bar had changed to a more classy grey color bar. The sub second line bar is gone, but replaced with graphical slider bar, that’s uber cool! Overall, the bar looks way cleaner and modern than the old one! Brave and smart move Apple! I like it! Besides the whole website look and feel is more cleaner, classier too. Definitely Apple at its own class!

By the way, there is a great news for Windows user as Safari, the premium web browser for Apple, is available for Windows as well! Currently still in Beta, but you can download the beta version via here! Can’t wait to test it out, cool! Here are the news release note:

“Apple® today introduced Safari™ 3, the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for Windows PCs and Macs. Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, based on the industry standard iBench tests, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari joins iTunes® in delivering Apple’s legendary user experience to both Windows and Mac® users as well as full support of open Internet standards. Safari 3 features easy-to-manage bookmarks, effortless browsing with easy-to-organize tabs and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information. Safari 3 public beta is available today as a free download at www.apple.com/safari.”

You can read more at here. Credits to 456BereaStreet.

Where to get quality free vectors?

. Inspiration, Resources

Vectors are cool. Unlike bitmap, vectors are lightweight and won’t losing its quality even you enlarge it or shrink it. Here I compiled a list of websites where you can get free, open source vectors for collection! Yoroshiku!

VectorVault free downloads

Everyweek, Vector Vault will have new free vectors available for download. Join their mailing list to get notified!

Go Media’s Arsenal sample vector

Go Media has awesome vector packs. They give out sample for free testing too.

Vecteezy

A great compilation site of free vectors

Briar Press Cuts

An extensive vector collection site. More on flourish ornaments.

Extras

Besides that, TutorialBlog here has created a great list of free vector resources, be sure to check out some awesome freebies there! Other honorable mentioned great vector sites are DeviantArt and BittBox. Thanks 😀

100 best typefaces presented by FontFont

. Typography

Today morning I stumbled upon to a great site, which is “Die 100 Besten Schriften” or “The 100 Best Typefaces”, presented by FontFont. Sadly the site is not in English (in German), but the most important is the font name is still recognizable. I knew 8 of that top 10. Helvetica deserves to be the no.1 because it was so influential in typography history, and even there is a movie dedicated to this font. Another font I like is Futura. Very nice, stylish and future feel! Well, with this list, certainly you can gain a lot of typography knowledge. Be sure to bookmark that page! Here I listed out the top 10 out of 100 of that list.

The top 10 fonts:

  1. Helvetica
  2. Garamond
  3. Frutiger
  4. Bodoni
  5. Futura
  6. Times
  7. Akzidenz Grotesk
  8. Officina
  9. Gill Sans
  10. Univers

Credit: SmashingMagazine, Wikipedia

Open Source Food Logo

. Web 2.0

This is the site that inspires me to write this post. Introducing OpenSourceFood. It’s about food sharing and rating community site. When I entered website, immediately attracted by the cleanliness, user friendly layout and.. the LOGO! The logo is a sliced boiled egg, constructed by just using two round shape, one yellow on top and a bigger white circle at back. Plus supported by the text “Open Source Food” at the side. I think the font used is “Myriad Pro”. Well, if you have some nice food to share or lack of cooking idea, be sure checking out this page!

Besides that, I gathered some sites that serves similar function which has a quite nice logo too. Be sure to continue reading!

Continue reading

Sawajiri Erika debut as “ERIKA”

. J-Pop, Japan

Japan popular young star Sawajiri Erika will make her debut as ERIKA with her first single “FREE”, to be released on 4th of July! Her “FREE” single will release in CD and CD+DVD version. CD+DVD version will features an original 12 pages color booklet. CD will contain three songs which is “FREE”, “Fantasy” & “Time to go home” plus original instrumental edition of “FREE”.

Sawajiri Erika, previously known as gravure artist, gaining her popularity through the tear jerking drama “1 Litre of Tears”. This is not her first time singing because, she released a single as Kaoru Amane entitled “Taiyou no Uta”, when she acted in a drama with the same name. The single became one of the top selling singles in year 2006. Maybe because of this encouragement and training, she decided to debut under her name ERIKA. Not much exposure about the new songs but Japanese now can first preview the song “Fantasy” via hand phone.

Actually the image of ERIKA is somewhere similar to Kaoru Amane, because the guitar is there too, seems like she don’t want to tag as “idol singer” but a more character way. I’m very eager to watch the PV of the song, because she looks kinda sexy in both single cover 😛

Credit: Ikimasshoi

“Kurosagi” becomes film, starring Yamapi

. Japan

Great news for all the Jdorama and Yamapi fans because his last year hit drama Kurosagi is going to make as film. This is Yamashita Tomohisa’s first movie and he act as the lead character Kurosaki. Maki Horikita and Yui Ichikawa, which appear in the drama will also participating this movie too. Yasuharu Ishii, who directs the recent drama hit “Hana Yori Dango”, will become this movie’s director. This movie is dated to release on Spring year 2008. Otanoshimi Kudasai!

Last year, I watched the drama too. I think this is a very unique drama because, it talks about Yamapi, a cheater who cheats other cheater. I still remember the intro narration when the drama starts “In this world there is three types of cheater: One is Shirosagi (white heron), a guy who cheats money; second is Akasagi (red heron), a woman who use sex appeal to cheat on other; and the final is Kurosagi (black heron), top among other cheater, experts in cheating Shirosagi and Akasagi.” haha..

Film Detail (in Japanese):
＜映画「クロサギ」＞
原作：黒丸・夏原武（小学館「週刊ヤングサンデー」連載中／コミックス1～13巻）
監督：石井康晴
主演：山下智久
出演：堀北真希／加藤浩次／市川由衣／田山涼成／奥貫薫／哀川翔／山崎努
2008年　全国東宝系ロードショー

Source: Tokyograph , TBS Kurosagi

Testing with Highslide JS

. Resources, Web Design

Last Thursday when I surfing the net, I stumbled upon this website. I found it a very cool way to enlarging thumbnails without refreshing the whole page. So I try it and I like it very much, because it is very convenient, lightweight and cool! Im using a similar service which is Lightbox 2, and I prefer HighSlide JS method. Below is my testing with HighSlide JS. Click on the picture and try it!

Instruction: Click to enlarge, use left or right arrow key to change image. Esc to return.

You Don’t Have Permission To Do That??

. General

After I switch my hosting, I installed the latest wordpress version 2.2. But I encounter a strange problem where I can Delete post and manage my categories, although I am the admin! How do you feel when you are the king but none of people listen to you?? It’s so frustrated! So strange… so I reinstall my wordpress couple of times but the problem still there. So I look for support and found this link. Seems that many people also encounter this problem too. Then I read through the post and found one link, suppose to be the solution, and I click it and edit according to the solution and.. voila, problem solved… YES!

Use good hosting and Archive your stuff!

. General

The first time using WordPress to blog, I’m so excited and almost everyday I post new entry. But after two weeks of happy blogging, earthquake struck.. My hosting [which is free] down, and my posts gone.. I stoned out there after seeing this… I know is my fault for using free hosting, so I can’t blame anyone but myself.. It was a bitter experience for me.

So, I immediately switch my hosting to ServerFreak Linux Hosting. Luckily I still save my pictures and changes in my computer here, so I quickly reinstall my current theme and finally, it starts working again. Huuray! Plus, ServerFreak is fast, I can upload files quicker, thanks! But still sad that my previous posts are all gone, and I have to redo it once more.. well this really teach me lessons that we shall backup our web content as well!

So, two things I learn after this incident. Hopefully I will be smarter next time!

Happy Blogging!

London 2012 Olympic Emblem

. General

Recently London unveiled the emblem of London Olympic 2012. It consists of a huge, bold, magenta colour “2012″, with “London” text sits at the bottom of the upper “2″, and Olympic logo at the “0″. It accompanied with white stroke and white shadow, with a vibrant cyan as background. When I look at it, I think the logo is quite impressive because it’s brave, original and very global feel, to suit the motto “Everyone’s Games, Everyone’s 2012″. However, it does not represents London, if this logo is without the “London” text, people might not know the logo is from which country.

When I search through the net, I came across this article in CreativeReview blog and read it. Here I quote the pros and cons that posted in there:

Pros:

  • It’s original and brave.
  • It contains none of the following: Big Ben, bulldogs, crowns and assorted other royal paraphernalia, the Union Jack, cross of St George, Pearly Kings and Queens, abstract figures doing vaguely athletic things.
  • It will work across a range of media, which will be vital in 2012 when coverage of the Games will break over a range of formats – eg mobile phones, PCs.
  • Children will probably like it and, like Whitney, we believe that they are the future…
  • Anything that annoys the Evening Standard this much can’t be all bad

Cons

  • You can’t read it very easily.
  • It already seems outdated – New Rave may be very On Trend with the fashion world this season but this still has five years of life to live out.
  • It’s inelegant and brash (unlike the restrained beauty of, say, Aicher’s work for Munich in 1972) – and what does that say about London?
  • It looks a bit like something Neil Buchanan might have put together on Art Attack. And, as a result, graphic design will receive another pasting in the popular press. “How much? My kid could have done better…”
  • If you stare at it long enough, some dirty-minded bloggers have been saying, it kind of looks like Lisa Simpson giving someone a blow job.

When I read the last sentence, I look back to see the logo again, it is TRUE! Oh man….. I’m not hate this logo thou, I like it because it is original and brave, like no other, but not this intercourse thingy….

Check out the logo animation here.