If you’ve never been to the National Cherry Blossom Festival, I’d strongly recommend it. Absolutely beautiful. It’s definitely crowded, so Metro is the way to go. This is my first time, and I will be going back to capture more images next weekend.

I’ve been ridiculously busy at work, and am debating the future of the blog. But, I haven’t firmly relegated it to the virtual dust bin of the Internet. We’ll see how it goes. Since my last post, we were named Agency of the Year by two industry magazines, and Fast Company named us as one of their 50 Most Innovative Companies. We’re growing, and lots of work is coming, and keeping me on my toes. Hopefully I’ll have time to catch up here, soon.

Until next time.

The agency I work for, AKQA, has been named OMMA Magazine’s Agency of the Year for Best Web Design and Development. Several projects highlighted include Smirnoff.com, the USPS Star Wars promotion, Life Takes Visa and Trident UK.

This is the fourth consecutive year that AKQA has been recognized by OMMA in its Agency of the Year Awards, starting in 2004 with Best Creative; 2005 Agency of the Year - Silver; and 2006 Agency of the Year - Gold. The award ceremony will take place in New York City on 17 January.

I can’t begin to say how thrilled (and privileged) I am to be working with such an innovative force in the realm of interactive marketing. AKQA continues to pioneer and rack up awards including Agency of the Decade from Revolution Magazine. It’s an honor to be part of such a talented, amazing team. I think I’ve finally found my niche again.

The full article text can be found here.

To all of my family and friends, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (Happy Hanukkah, too!)

Between moving my office and home, and settling in to a new job, this holiday season has been really busy and hectic which has limited (once again) how often I post. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get back into the swing of things.

See you all in 2008!

For the sake of preserving my sanity I’ve not posted numbers 1 through 83 of my Leopard Laments, but this one pressed my “irk” button quite a few times this evening, so I figured I would share it.

It looks like fan-style Stacks in Leopard get clipped when they spill over the boundary of your primary display and onto the second, as depicted above. I don’t know if this affects all resolutions, but it is completely reproducible on my Mac Pro with both displays running at their native resolution of 2560×1600. My primary display is on the left-hand side, with the secondary on the right-hand side. They’re aligned in the Displays preference pane.

With Apple pushing multi-display setups on desktops and portables (as well as over-hyping Stacks in general), I’m somewhat surprised this managed to pass muster and exit QA without being detected. Odd.

Naturally, I reported this a short while ago through RadarWeb and hopefully it’ll be addressed in 10.5.2. With this recent bug, I’ve filed a total of 84 bug reports against 10.5 and 10.5.1. <rant>Unlike those that pirate somehow obtain pre-release builds and plaster screenshots all over for the purpose of looking “cool” to their friends, I actually do report things from time to time.</rant>

For a larger image, head to my Flickr page.

Now You See It. Now You Don’t! Metis TransPacific’s “747-400″ is seen landing in Vancouver. Roll your mouse over the image to view the pre-Photoshop original 747-300 owned by Air Atlanta Icelandic. They even removed a taxiway and an airport vehicle to complete the look! [Javascript Required]

Well, not really. More like crashing to new lows with this one. The vapor represented here isn’t what forms contrails at altitude.

Do you live in Vancouver, Canada? Are you looking for a ridiculously inexpensive trip to the lovely destination that is Macau? Yes? Then look no further than Metis TransPacific Charter Airlines. For the low, low price of HKD$1,500 (about USD$180) you can park your posterior in one of their comfy “next generation” aircraft economy seats and enjoy all the amenities that even some blue chip airlines can’t offer.

Sound too good to be true? Unfortunately, it is.

It looks like the founders of Metis TransPacific are cooking up an elaborate hoax to try and extort money out of the flying public. First, the airport authorities in Macau and Vancouver have no record of the airline ever operating a single flight. Their announced “wet lease” agreement with Canada-based ZOOM Airlines doesn’t exist either. As for their fleet, well, let’s just say things don’t add up there, either. ZOOM exclusively operates Boeing 767 aircraft yet Metis’ web site makes no mention of that equipment type. And, there’s not even a single phone number to be found there, either. All correspondence is through e-mail and web contact forms. Hmm.

Looking back to their fleet, they mention it consists of “next generation” Boeing aircraft including a 757-200, a 747-300, and a 747-400. While I understand the marketing ploy here, none of these aircraft are “next generation” by any stretch, and I’ve never heard them referenced (recently, at least) as such by any operator that presently flies these types. The majority were designed and built in the 80’s. Moving beyond the “ooh ahh” marketing hype, it gets even better when certain statistics come into play. Here’s one: The stated fuel capacity for the 757-200 is over 40,000 US gallons — almost as much as a 747! (Did I miss the launch of the 757-200XLR at some point?) The real capacity is in the range of some 11,000 gallons. Oh, and as for those snazzy cabin pictures? Those were photographs taken of a retired South African 747-400. Interesting.

Of course, the devil is in the details. See the image above? That’s supposedly Metis’ single 747-400 aircraft. In reality, it’s a 747-300. (No winglets!) And, it’s also registered to air cargo company Air Atlanta Icelandic. A quick spray in Photoshop and boom! Metis TransPacific has its wings.

And, it gets even worse. Make a reservation, and you’re politely spammed by an automated daemon “confirming” your reservation for 24 hours and asking that you initiate a wire transfer for the fare to a bank in Macau. What, no frequent flier credit card love?

But, let’s not stop there. The e-mail also asks for potential ID theft material, including passenger names, passport numbers, country of issue, and more.

Thanks to the keen eye of Peter Miller at SKYTRAX, and the great guys on the Airliners.net forums, it looks like this scam has had its wings clipped. They’ve even tagged the bogus company’s Wikipedia entry to keep this from perpetuating any longer.

As the old adage goes… if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

[Original 747-300 Image Copyright © John Yu]

Despite having a pair of more efficient four-core Intel Xeon 5300 “Clovertown” processors, the 8-Core Mac Pro certainly doubles as an excellent space heater in sub-30-degree weather. Throw in a pair of 30″ Cinema HD Displays, and you’ve got your own aluminum convection oven once the machine’s fans kick in every so often.

Seriously, I don’t need central heat with this thing around. Though, I did also say that back when I had the Quad G5. However, that made the house a little too warm and probably consumed more power than your average space heater would anyway.

This, though, is just right. So nice.

I’m still trying to break the “one post per month” spell the blog has been under for quite some time but I haven’t succeeded — yet. However, another big change is happening in my life that I felt warranted a quick update.

As most will know I’ve been working in software for the past few years. It was fun and challenging, but one thing was noticeably missing. The type of creative “spark” and innovation I enjoy leading weren’t possible from where I was situated. Sure, things did happen, but not as quickly or as cleanly as I would have liked.

After looking at things in retrospect I decided that it was time to shift focus. I didn’t want to leave IT, but I did want to position myself within an organisation that fosters creativity and innovation. Recounting my experiences from working at Apple and within the advertising/public relations space, I knew that’s where I wanted to be.

That said, I’m incredibly pleased to announce that I have accepted a position with AKQA.

What is AKQA, you ask? Simple. A large, multinational interactive advertising agency. But, it doesn’t stop there. They’ve been consistently ranked as one of the best agencies around year after year. They were even named “Agency of the Decade” by a highly respected industry publication.

AKQA specializes in internet and digital advertising and works with a number of well known clients, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Visa, Microsoft, and Smirnoff. Use an Xbox 360? AKQA designed the user interface.

I start as the IT Manager for the DC office on December 10. Besides traditional IT work, I’ll also be getting my feet wet on the creative side of the house. Of course, updates will be forthcoming as soon as I can manage them.

Until then it’s back to trying to get the blog back on track. Hopefully.