The National Maritime Museum of Cornwall have a new exhibition this year, focusing on lighthouses throughout the ages around the once treacherous peninsula.

I was asked to produce some more rotating cubes for the NMMC. These are 1.7m tall, and need adequate detailing for this kind of resolution.

The 3 lighthouses shown here are (from left to right):

I wish you all a very happy 2010.

The process is rather simple – I went to an electronics store, filled out the form, got a 15 day free trial & the hardware. There is only one device per brand / store. Mine is i-o data (LABI), which was cheaper than the BIC CAMERA model (by 4000 yen) – they are essentially the same.

The hardware consists of a router and a usb key. The key is the arial, which can be plugged into my laptop while I’m out and about, and the router works at home. (it also makes my $300 apple router rather obsolete) Getting connected is as simple as typing in the WEP key printed on the router.

Out and about is a little trickier – there are no drivers for the mac. So it’s a windows only experience right now.

Speeds are actually realistically faster than my old old wired 100mbit connection, however it’s only 40mbit – and only works in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. I tested this by greedily getting my hands on the largest files possible at such short notice – 1080p apple trailers. My old connection would have to sit and load half way through. No such woes here.

Costiness is also rather reasonable, about the same as you would pay for your home connection. Hardware is a little over 17,000 yen (about $185 all in)

Out of the box WiMax lets you connect all the computers within your house by simply logging onto the wifi network the router creates. No fuss.

WiMax works globally too. So say for example for some reason I need to go to London or New York, tomorrow, I only need to bring my USB key and it’ll use my account, with no change in monthly fee. Roaming is essentially part of the deal.

Maybe when they get it working on the mac, I’ll be able to do that.

For years I knew there was something missing from my life. I felt this emptiness inside. All these different computers I have but none of them are connected to one another.

Then, I heard of this thing called .mac. I was hooked. All my data synchronised between machines, bookmarks all the same on my browsers – whether it be my iPhone, work machines, home machine or laptop.

Names changed but the service remained the same, in-fact it got better! Now I could sync all my files! This was just getting better and better, my experience was peaking! No more swapping and burning of CD’s. No more instances of “not having the right file”. No more did I need a USB key just to carry my data home. The iDisk solved all my problems and I lavished my hard earned cash on it willingly.

Until today.

Whilst re-naming some files, the all knowing iDisk had a technical error and decided to delete my data from all synchronised computers, and from the cloud. This was a bombshell – 3 months of work and a year of steady use, *poof* gone, in a blink of the eye.

I got in touch with my dealer and told them I need my fix. They told me there is no way back, and in two weeks time they will “have a look”.

How can I run my business with this shoddy service? I can’t wait two weeks! Does the rival drug “dropbox” do this? (no – they have user editable delete/restore histories)

Climbing into my time-machine offered no respite.

Good afternoon, my name is Hawken and I trusted the cloud.

Luckily, one of the synced computers was bound to have kept the files, because it hasn’t been online for a bit. I got in there, turned off the wi-fi and copied the iDisk. Situation averted. Re-populated. A virtual “V” for victory against the evil empire.

I got lucky. Maybe next time this won’t be the case. They are out to get you.

My addiction to the cloud, is over.?

For a few years now Tokyo2.0 has been holding its monthly web seminar at various locations in Tokyo. Due to it's ever expanding size the event is currently held at Super Deluxe in Nishi Azabu.

Facemakr was initially invited to participate in this event, however this month instead of holding a seminar, Tokyo2.0 shall be playing host to 10 independent web startups. Informal chats can be held with these different web folks, who will be manning mini-booth style islands.

Super Deluxe will probably start filling up from around 7pm, if you are around drop in for a chat – I can tell you all about Facemakr and my freelance work. Maybe buy me a beer if you're feeling generous. 

About 3 months passed before I could get this project finished, after a few hours here and many hours there, it was finally done. A lot of the main text on the site are images, I did this to make the site look pretty on windows, where fonts are not rendered so smoothly. However, upon checking the source code of the site, can see that actually the text really is there – it’s replaced with a trick – this means that screen readers and google can still get on with the site.

Ramping up the campaigns for traffic and customers, the site also runs in both English and Japanese.

Come have a look: facemakr

Taking a “from the ground up” approach and realising that now the brand has been furthered in the Japanese territory, it was time to evaluate the existing website (which I built a couple of years back).

While browsing some of the new photography, I came to think it would be nice to have these beautiful large pictures in the background instead of pictures contained inside the design — kind of inside-out design if you will. This is the real base for the overall site, from the information pages to the recipes right down to the terms and conditions pages. The rest of the design flowed from this simple choice — based on our “house” grid.

This redux also called for a new way to run the site, so we chose drupal as the final base. Working with this structure has allowed us to add features we would otherwise think twice about including. So far it’s been a pleasure, thanks to the wizardry of Erik Johansson.

Now back by a cookery campaign for it’s launch on all the major Japanese cookery websites, we are keeping our fingers crossed for a definite hit.

So if you can read Japanese, and like beef or webdesign, come have a look!

New Zealand Meat & Wool( J )

Some icons for a party Eat creative was having. These were printed and used to decorate the office.

JMEC say it best themselves:

I was responsible for the architecture, site design and front end coding in this case. We wrapped the resulting mix over Drupal to serve the site. JMEC are very happy with the result and if you yourself fancy taking the course, apply here!

Many thanks to Erik Johansson as always.