Categorized: Journal

Nikko Icons Beta Release

Posted on by Josh

After countless hours of design work, I’m proud to release the first beta version of the Nikko Icon set. I’m also releasing a completely free “web edition” that contains 99 high quality icons. These web edition icons were create for people that don’t use Gnome but would like to use the icons for other purposes. The downside to the web edition is that it’s an incomplete set (it only contains icons that are 48 pixels in width and height). However, if you want all of the icons, they’re included in the Gnome edition – you just have to dig.

The changes for this release include:

  • # New navigation icons
  • # Most icons are now using the Tango color palette
  • # A lot of new application Icons
  • # New mimetypes

Get more info and download it here.

Moving back to Tucson.

Posted on by Josh

After an extended stay in Japan (15 months), a visit with the folks in Seattle (10 days), a short stop in Tucson (7 days), and a trip to Atlanta GA and Jackson MS (10 days), I’m finally back in Tucson with no plans of going anywhere soon. To make a long story short; I had a great holiday, and I’m enjoying being back in the US, but I’m totally burned out in regard to traveling. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll change my mind but for now I’m content with just staying put for a while. Callie and I finally have our house together (for the most part) and I’m getting excited about doing some freelance web design here in Tucson again. Continue reading “Moving back to Tucson.” →

Redesign

Posted on by Josh

I’ll be returning to Tucson in less than two months and had some time to give the Tucsonlabs a clean redesign.

For this particular design, I chose to use a much wider layout than I previously used. I also made it both a fixed-width three column layout and a fixed-width two column for a few pages. I completely redesigned the structure of the homepage, design page, contact page, and articles page. For the articles and about pages, I chose to use a two column layout that was fairly similar to the previous design. I updated the logo slightly, and I ditched the adobe house (the lab) in favor of the lone saguaro. I still have a lot of little things I’d like to implement, but I thought I better get out what I had now and make small additions down the road. I’d say it’s about 95% complete. Please let me know if you find any bugs or have any suggestions.

Long time, no post.

Posted on by Josh

I’ve been keeping busy with work and have been doing a lot of traveling and sight seeing.

Callie and I went visited Hokkaido for holiday which was amazing. Here are some pics.

Callie is stoked to have a huge backpack and an empty train.

This was pre longest-local-train-ride ever, so Callie was still in a pretty good mood. Actually, she really didn’t even mind the 24 hour trip from Sapporo to Tokyo. I did not fair so well.

Random train stop in Hokkaido was pretty - Kita Funaoka

This was a random stop on our way to Sapporo. It was right next to the beach.

Volcano near Lake Toya

Lake Toya is a spectacular area to visit. They had hosted the G8 conference here shortly before our trip.

Ubuntu 8.04 Released

Posted on by Josh

My overall impression of Hardy Heron is that it didn’t spend a long enough time in beta testing and was released too early.

Way too early. Last I checked Firefox 3 was still in Beta, and to me this says a lot about the current release. I can’t really go into detail about all of the bugs with this release because there are more than I have time to right about. In general I think that the Ubuntu team was a little to ambitious with this release and it really makes me wonder about the future of Ubuntu and the practicality of 6 month release cycles with the amount of new features they’re trying to push. I’m getting a far better experience on Debian Lenny (which is still in beta testing) in terms of stability, boot speed, and general system performance than I am with this RTM version 8.04 of Ubuntu. Those are just my thoughts, feel free to comment.

Moving to Tokyo Metro Area (Saitama)

Posted on by Josh

I just moved from Gifu and am now living in the Ageo city, which is located in Saitama prefecture – part of the greater Tokyo metro area.

Unfortunately I am living in Saitama which is in the greater Tokyo area, but it’s not exactly in Tokyo, but it is 20 minutes from Akabane, 35 minutes from Ueno (on an express train) and close to Ikebukuro, so it’s not too bad. It’s also an inexpensive place to live and kind of nice to not have to deal with the volume of people tipically The high point is that it’s near Tokyo, about 40 minutes to Shibuya on the good old Takasaki line. The low point would be that it’s in Saitama, and there’s not a whole bunch to do besides go to Tokyo. The new house is small but nice. Pics coming as soon as I get a camera!

Blog Redesign

Posted on by Josh

I recently redesigned Tucson-labs.com, adding an articles section for tutorials and design related topics.

I also added a journal section for short posts that aren’t necessarily focused on web design or development. Tucson web design at Tucson Labs is now powered by an updated WordPress 2.3.1 and is being hosted in Tucson while I’m working in Japan. Hopefully in the near future I’ll be releasing a series of tutorials on design focusing on Inkscape as I feel there aren’t enough good tutorials on this program and its capabilities.