First of all, sorry for the lack of updates on this site because I’m quite sick for these few days and still haven’t fully recover yet. Well, last few days I stumbled upon on this article about “Learn 35+ Languages for Free in Itunes” and discover that actually I can also learn Japanese language for free besides attending classes.

What you need to do is first download and install the Itunes player. Then launch it and go to the Itunes Store, and search for “Japanese Language” or “Learn Japanese”, and you will get a list of free podcasts on Japanese language lessons. There is a lot out there and I’m so amazed. I actually downloaded some episodes especially from JapanesePod101 and Japancast. It’s very educational and entertaining, and the quality of the podcasts are very good and I learn a lot from the lessons.

Extra: Display furigana above kanji

Japanese language uses a lot of kanji where sometimes I found hard to identify or read them. But these two FireFox extensions helped me out by displaying furigana on top of the kanji. The first one is Furigana Injector 0.71, and another is XHTML Ruby Support 2.1.2008040101.

It’s very helpful to Japanese learners like me, but somehow I found some display error like the picture above, the “母” was supposed to read as “haha (はは)”, but it shows as “kaka (かか)”. Article was taken from Japanese Wikipedia on Mother’s Day.

Happy Mother’s Day

Last and never forgetting, today is Mother’s Day. Here I wishes “Happy Mother’s Day” to my mom and all the mothers in the world, thanks for all the support and caring for all these years. Here, I dedicated the song “Mother” by SEAMO to all the Jay-han.com blog readers out there and wish you all having a Happy Mother’s Day too

When I found a inspiring websites, normally I will make a screenshot of the site. Until now, I had collected quite a bunch of screenshots and they are scattering inside my hard disk drive. I wanted to share those nice website screenshots with everyone as a gallery in one page but I couldn’t find a way. Fortunately ScrnShots has become the perfect solution.

Today, I received an email and it says that ScrnShots had gone public! I was so excited an quickly sign up an account. ScrnShots is like a Flickr dedicated to web screenshots and screen based design. It looks like an alternative to web design galleries because it was uploaded by community, and the screenshots uploaded can be embed into your blog and any other social sites too. Cool.

Personally I found ScrnShots is fun to use, and the most important thing is, it’s FREE! I really recommend to web designers to sign up and start sharing great web screenshots. This is my account but I just uploaded a few only.

I think ScrnShots is a good service, I think I’m going to stick and play with it for a while

One way check out the latest hot musics in Japanese music industry is by looking at their music charts. When speaking about Japanese music charts, the first thing that comes to mind will definitely is the Oricon. But there is more other charts that worth checking out too that I introduce in this post.

Oricon Style

I visit Oricon Style regularly. The ranking is based on the sales of the singles/album. Sorted by daily, weekly, and monthly, Oricon itself is already sufficient to check out the latest hit music. English version can be found at ThePPN.

Japan Billboard Hot 100

A Japanese music chart based on Billboard style calculation.

Yahoo! Music Ranking

Another impressive music charts brought to you by Yahoo!.

Recochoku Chaku Uta Ranking

A chart site dedicated to hand phone music tone (Chaku Uta). Normally the upcoming release songs will be first release as Chaku Uta. It is quite an important chart to look out because Japanese people used to download songs through hand phone.

Mora music download ranking

A chart based on music downloads.

Music Station Power Ranking

Finally, another worth checking chart is Music Station Power Ranking.

End note
Because this post is all about Japanese music so all the sites are in Japanese language. Sorry if any inconvenience caused.

In Japan, there are a series of holidays from late April to early May which they call it as “Golden Week”. During Golden Week, many companies are closing to let their employees to have a long nice rest and many Japanese people are going off for long vacation. So during this period of time, leisure-based industries will be very busy and all flights and hotel rooms will be fully booked!

The Golden Week kicks off in April 30th which is Greenery Day until the 5th of May where the Japanese celebrates Children’s Day. A specific Golden Week holidays are listed below, cited from Wikipedia:

Golden Week

April 29

• Emperor’s Birthday (天皇誕生日, Emperor’s Birthday), until 1988
• Greenery Day, or Nature Day (みどりの日, Midori no hi), from 1989 until 2006
• Shōwa Day (昭和の日, Shōwa no hi), from 2007

May 3

• Constitution Memorial Day (憲法記念日, Kenpō kinenbi)

May 4

• holiday† (国民の休日, Kokumin no kyūjitsu), from 1985 until 2006
• Greenery Day, or Nature Day (みどりの日, Midori no hi) (from 2007)

May 5

• Children’s Day (こどもの日, Kodomo no hi), also customarily known as Boys’ Day (端午の節句, Tango no sekku).

Many Japanese take paid time off on the intervening work days, but some companies also close down completely and give their employees time off. Golden week is the longest vacation period of the year for many Japanese jobs. According to P. Sean Bramble, the author of CultureShock! Japan:

The Golden Week is always gorgeous: warm sunshine and without any oppressive humidity. Many people if they take a vacation at all, will take it as this time, with the result being that public transport is clogged with vacationers and air ticket prices increase dramatically.

So, I think if want to travel to Japan, it is better to avoid this period of time because the streets of Japan is flooded with vacationers and no more hotel rooms available! To know how is 2008’s Golden Week and 2009’s Golden Week locate in the calendar, you can visit the Japan Guide’s article on Golden Week.

Finally, Happy Golden Week to all Japanese people out there!

I remember that I first saw the dotted tunnel in one picture posted in Fubiz which sparks my idea on creating this tutorial. The graphic effect is kind of cool so I decided to try replicate the look and found out that it’s simple to do. The main tools used for this tutorial will be Pen Tool, Transform Tool and Blend Tool.

Making dotted pattern brush

At first we need to create the dotted line to make it a Pattern Brush show in step 1 below. The step by step creation can be seen here. After creating, select the pattern and drag it into the Brushes palette. A New Brush window prompted. Select “New Pattern Brush” and click OK. Then, you can name the brush or leave it as it is. The most important thing is change Colorization method to Tint. With this, you can change the color of the pattern. Click OK to finish.

Dotted Tunnel - Scaling method

The new Pattern Brush should appears in the Brush palette. Now, select the Ellipse Tool and press Shift to create a perfect circle. Select the stroke of the circle and apply the dotted brush stroke that we created just now to it. Change the stroke size to adjust the size of the dot.

There is two method to create the dotted tunnel. The first is by using the Scale transform tool. Select the circle, now go to Object > Transform > Scale… to open up the Scale window. Key in the amount of uniform scale for example 110% like picture below, and then click Copy. Hit Ctrl+D to duplicate more and more copies until it forms a tunnel.

By using this method, you can achieve two kinds of dotted tunnel shown in picture below. On the left is with “Scale Strokes and Effects” option enabled at the Scale window while on the right is not.

Dotted Tunnel - Blending method

The scaling method is easier however it does not gives us flexibility on editing it because it’s pretty much fixed. The second method which is using Blending tool allows us to create more creative types of tunnel and editing flexibility.

Create one dotted stroke circle and duplicate it to a larger one. Then select both of them and go to Object > Blend > Make. Then, in the same path we open up the Blending Options window to modify the blend mode. I’m using Specified Distance. Woot, a simple dotted tunnel was formed.

We can achieve different kinds of dotted tunnel by making some changes. First, we can modify the stroke by using the Stroke Options found in Brush palette. Here I scale the stroke size to 300% and notice how the blending change. We can also change the color of the tunnel too, because we make the stroke available for Colorization.

Next, we can also achieve 3D-ish dotted tunnel by changing the circle position. Look cool isn’t it? Besides that, we can expand the appearance of the blending the delete some part of the dots to make other interesting graphics like fan shown in picture below.

So this is the end of the tutorial. It’s a very basic and simple tutorial, I hope you can learn something from this. Thank you very much.

Last time, when I want a full site screenshot, I do print screen page by page and then join it back in Photoshop. Clever. But the tools below make me look so stupid.

Firefox Add-on: Screengrab!

Screengrab! saves the entire webpages as images. Once installed, the Screengrab! icon appears at the bottom bar of Firefox browser. You can either choose to save or copy to clipboard. Output formar is in PNG. Best use for quick screen grabbing and saving. However it cannot take screenshots of flash content sites thou.

Firefox Add-on: FireShot

FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates and edits screenshots of web pages. Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

The Fireshot button appears at the right side of search bar. And like Screengrab!, it can’t capture flash contents. Although I use Screengrab! more often, but I found that FireShot is more useful.

Web: Super Screenshot

Superscreenshot is a website that let you enter a URL, and will give you the website screenshots in return. The URL entered can be save as full page with full original size either in JPG (compressed) or png (best quality, but takes some time to load). Again, it can’t capture flash content sites. Plus the screenshot width is narrow, about 900 pixels only. This means that content that wider than 900px will be cropped.

There is alternative site which is Browser Shots, but normally people use it to test how the site looks in different browsers.

Application: WebShot

WebShot allows you to take screenshots of web pages and save them as full sized images or thumbnails. Screenshots images can be output in the JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP formats. The application is very flexible, you can set the width for the screenshot, and if you did not set the height, it will capture a whole page.

And the best part is it successfully captured flash content sites. But, flash sites normally takes more time to load, so to capture flash sites, I suggests to set the Timeouts for document for more than 30 seconds, depends on how fast your line is. It is free to use too.

End Note
Above are the 4 methods to take full web screenshots faster and smarter. If you have other methods, feel free to tell me by using the comment form below.

Sometimes a small little changes can make a lot difference. Today I want to talk about the small design change of one of Malaysia bank call Bank Islam. Established in 1983, Bank Islam primarily to assist the financial needs of the country’s Muslims and to further extend its services to the whole population at large. Not long ago, they revealed their whole new corporate identity to this maroon and gray color scheme with a more globalise kind of logo design. But when I saw the logo, I feel not right about the logo.

Please look at the picture shown above. Originally the logo design was presented like the one on the left. Can you see something was not quite right in that logo? Well, from the logo rationale I read from the Bank Islam site it says that

The Bank Islam logo incorporates a “crescent” embracing the word “Islam”.

So in the initial design, the crescent which is in maroon color was incorporated into the character “K” of Bank. But when the “K” was being modified as part of the crescent graphic until it does not look like a readable “K” anymore, will you think that it looks and sounds like BANK ISLAM rather than BANK ISLAM?

That’s really causing a big confusion there (at least for me). However, about a month back when I walking to work where I will pass Bank Islam, immediately I spotted a little changes on the logo. Now it looks the one on the right. The crescent has become a graphic on its own and the “K” become the regular “K” and having the same color as other character. It must be some people having same opinion as me and propose for design amendment. The new version looks and sounds far better than the previous design, and it won’t cause confusion to viewers too.

Conclusion

Designers loves to play with typography when comes to logo design. But, we still need to take into consideration on the logo clarity and whether it will cause confusion to the viewers or not. In the end, kudos to the design team that made necessary changes. Small changes, big difference.

1. Alan - Ashita e no Sanka, 2. Skelt 8 Bambino - My Friends, 3. Ragdoll - Monochrome Eyes, 4. Aoyama Thelma - Last Letter, 5. Saori@Destiny - Sakura, 6. Shimizu Shota - Home

Alan

Alan (阿蘭 or 阿兰) is a Tibetan/Chinese singer and Erhu player from Sichuan province who debuted in 2005 with the album Sheng Sheng Zui Ru Lan. Then she was scouted by Avex Japan and made her Japanese language debut in 2007 with the single “Ashita e no Sanka”.

I only notice Alan when she released second single “Hitotsu”. I immediately attracted by her great voice when listening to this single. After that, I searched and listened her debut single “Ashite e no Sanka” which I think it’s one of the most unique song I ever heard this year. It’s not your average J-pop tune, because it was blended with Chinese music instruments together with singing style of Alan. Not to mention that she is beautiful too.

She has a grand wish that she hope World peace, and building a happiness bridge among Asian countries through her songs. Plus, there is a great review about Alan’s debut at Channel Ai blog.

Skelt 8 Bambino

Skelt 8 Bambino consists of 5 members. Each of them has their own group activities but because of having the same interest, they group together in Spring 2006. S8B major debuted in 2008 under Nayutawave Records.

I know them through their second single “My Friends” which is a catchy Rap song. I really love this song just after second of listening to the song. It’s a song of friendship, no matter we are getting together or apart, we are still friends that kind of feeling. Great for graduation song.

Ragdoll

Ragdoll is a dance music unit consists of two member, Yummi (vocal, dance, lyricist) and Tatsugoo (Keyboard, DJ, Composer and Art Direction). Sounds like they are doing all the music and production jobs! Ragdoll released two mini album back in the end of year 2007, but I only discovered them this year.

The first song got me hooked to them is “Cycletime” in their second mini album. Since then, their dance music had been poisoned me for quite a long time. However my top favorite song from Ragdoll is “monochrome eyes”, i like it a lot. Many people thinks that the female vocalist Yuumi’s voice was like the early days of Ayumi’s voice, but I don’t think that way. Check out their Myspace page to listen more of their songs.

Aoyama Thelma

If I say Aoyama Thelma is the hottest newcomer in 1st quarter of 2008, I think everyone will agree to me? Indeed because not only releasing her fist album “DIARY” and chart topping single “Soba ni iru ne”, she also featured in some other artists music as well.

Aoyama Thelma (青山テルマ) is a Japanese R&B artist who debuted in September 2007. She is one quarter Trinidadian. She is famous for her collaboration song with SoulJa: Koko ni Iru yo and her answer song, Soba ni Iru ne (which reached #1 on Oricon charts in its second week, and stayed in top 10 for 12 weeks).

Saori@destiny

Saori@Destiny major debuted in March 26, 2008 with single “Sakura”, although she released a single back in December 2007. Saori@destiny is a Japanese technopop artist produced by Oonishi Terukado. She is part of D-topia Entertainment. From her official site, it says that Technopop x Candy Girl House = Saori@Destiny.

I’m absolutely digging sweet candy electro pop style musics like Perfume, COLTEMONIKHA, Capsule type of musics. So, Saori@destiny’s music well fitted into my music taste.

Shimizu Shota

Shimizu Shota (清水翔太; Born February 27, 1989) is an ex-SUGER member and current solor singer/songwriter, known for his collaborations with Dohzi-T, and 加藤ミリヤ on the Celine Dion tribute album. He made his solo debut on February 20th 2008 with the single “HOME.”

Despite his young age, he sings really well. He will put full emotion when performing a song which I like it very much. His music leaning towards R&B style and artists that he respect is Danny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles.

End note
Well, these are the six J-pop new artists that I enjoy listening to their music. Try listen to their music through the music player embeded above. Hope you like the songs too. And do you have any new artists that I missed out?

Credits: Theppn | Wikipedia

This year many popular Japanese idols reach this 20 years old this year. Let’s see how many popular idols that I know becoming adult this year and never forgetting to say “Happy 20th Birthday”!

First up is Toda Erika (戸田 恵梨香) was born in August 17, 1988. Been a fan of her after watching drama “Nobuta wo Produce”. Best known for starring as Misa Misa in Death Note movies.

Having breakthrough year in 2007, Yui Aragaki (新垣 結衣) will turn 20 when the date reaches 11th of June this year. Best known for acting in handphone novel turn movie “Koizora” and releasing debut album “Sora”.

Maki Horikita (堀北 真希) was very lucky because she stars in Ikemen Paradise where a bunch of handsome guys surrounds her. She celebrates 20th birthday on 6th of October.

Kuroki Meisa (黒木 メイサ) has beautiful look, I first knew her after watching “Tada Kimo wo Aishiteru” where she looks stunning in that movie. She acted in “One Pound Gospel” last season as Sister Angela and going to be 20 at next month 28th.

Eikura Nana (榮倉 奈々) appears in dramas as well as fashion models too. You can see her in dramas like “Kiken na Aneki” and “Proposal Daisakusen”. Already an adult because her birthday is on February 12, 1988.

Risa Niigaki (新垣 里沙) born October 20th, 1988, is a member of Hello! Project. Now she is the sub-leader for Morning Musume, a popular frequent changing female group.

Sasaki Nozomi (佐々木 希) is an active model for popular Japanese fashion magazine PINKY. Besides, she is a gravure idol too. Her birthday is on February 8th, just 4 days earlier than Eikura Nana.

I came across two idols below through their gravure pictures. First up is Koizumi Maya (小泉 麻耶), she was popular because of her busty G cup and she is going to be 20 years old this year on 2nd of July.

Asami Oda (小田 あさ美) was born in September 14th, 1988, is also a gravure idol too.

Above are 9 Japanese idols that will be officially an adult this year. Hope they will keep their good work and having better future. Actually I already planned to post this long time ago but just feeling shy to post. I think this might be the last for Japanese Idol related post from this blog.

Note:
Images from the sharing is caring Internet community.

Artzmania Vol.8 Eye Candy

Download the latest Artzmania e-zine issue. My friend’s work was featured in this issue too. Congratulations to him!

We Love WP

Website gallery showcasing the quality website design that powered by Wordpress. My blog design was featured in here too! Thanks.

4U - beauty image bookmarking

4U is social image bookmark service for everyone to share a beautiful woman image all over the world.

Newspond

Newspond is the ultimate hub for the latest tech, science, and gaming news. Sleek graphic interface. Design by Chan Karunamuni.

SPACEINVADERS WORLDWAR

On-line Nation Vs. Nation PC game [SPACE INVADERS WORLD WAR]. Beta version expected to be available on mid April!

Super Mario in 14kB Javascript

Classic Super Mario game now playable using Javascript and it is just need 14kB to do it.

Block Posters

Create any size wall posters from any size images. Totally Free To Use!

The Rasterbator

The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size.

幕末古写真ジェネレーター (old photo generator)

Turn your photo into Japanese ancient photo effect with this generator.

Should Redesign? Cast your vote now!

Launched in April 2008, a Suffolk Software project, Should Redesign aims to help webmaster determine if their websites need a refresh.

Adobe TV

Adobe TV is your online source for expert insight and inspiration. feed your passion for Adobe products with insider tips, innovative techniques, and behind-the-scenes tours delivered on video, on demand.

Learn HTML and CSS

People often think it is extremely difficult to make a website. That is not the case! Everyone can learn how to make a website. Use our tutorials on HTML and CSS and start building your own website in about an hour.

Design Resources Search Engine

The custom search engine that brings you to the best design resources on the web.

The Art of The Title Sequence

Sometimes I am more anticipated to one movie’s title sequence than the actual movie. This site collects and showcase the great title sequence of movies and drama series that will make you watch twice.

amaztype

Amaztype using Amazon web services. Basically you just enter any typographic book related word (for example “typography” above) and it will shows up the results in the form of words you search just now.

Change The Thought

Founded in 2002, the owner Christopher Cox turn the initial portfolio site to a resource for the global creative community. The site has since continued to grow adding editors and content at an accelerated rate.

Signal Noise | The art of James White

James White works are colorful, complex and geometrical. A very unique style indeed. Like it.

ISO50 - The Visual Work of Scott Hansen

An inspiring blog and ranges of works by Scott Hansen. Scott’s works has vintage feel.

Abduzeedo

It is very impressive seeing how this site grows. This blog was created and developed by Fabio Sasso, with a group of writers. This site has inspired me in many ways.

Fubiz

Your daily dose of Inspiration.

Free Flash Files at Flasheezy

Stupid Name. Cool Flash! Your one stop shop to download free flash files and tutorials.

完璧画像検索 (Perfect Image Search)

Basically this search engine helps you search image from many big image search engines like Yahoo! image search, Flicker etc simultaneously. Perfect.

Art With Baggage in Tow

Takashi Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum. Takashi Murakami is one of my favorite Japanese illustrator. His work is cute and vibrant. Best known for making LV handbags colorful.

Photoshop Disasters

Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.

Sanna Annukka

Although I did not listen to Keane’s music, but the cover design deeply attracted me when I first saw on newspapers. Then, through several sources like internet and magazines, I knew who is the designer behind the cover.

Grooveshark lite

Listen to music online with this cool, user friendly web service.

Aviary - Creation on the Fly

Aviary is a suite of web-based applications (RIAs) for people who create. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, we have a tool for artists of all genres. Just enter your email address if interested in the Early Bird Invitation.