Now you can relive the 80’s dream, be the envy of your co-workers with this DIY Ghetto Blaster!

Click to download the PDF. For best results print on card at a3, score edges and stick with double-sided tape cut in half length-ways.

Feel free to add whatever you want to it; arms, legs, robot head, hat, LEDs, cut it in half etc. I can’t offer any prizes but prize enough will be making something to rival actually owning one.

Email me a photo of your personalised creation and I will add it to this article with you name and a link to your website (if applicable)

*due to popular demand, batteries now included!

collabs:

Kenn Munk - Stereo Zero

Kenn, a superstar model maker is first into the throw with his “Stereo Zero” melting Boom Box. Kenn Munk’s homepage

Click to Download PDF

customs:

Strictly not for re-sale on vector art websites, we’ll be watching.

If in print, a credit must be made. See creative commons license link at bottom of this page.

Click image to download the EPS file.

Somehow a ghetto blaster folded out like that is appealing, so are break dancing businessmen!

the ghetto blaster can also be downloaded to print out and personalise, click for details

• 11. NEW: cannot forward attachments

  Often, phone emails written in Japanese are delivered as “mime-attachment.txt”. Without any form of copy and paste I often forward mails to my computer for difficult kanji translation. When they arrive as attachments, I have no means of forwarding them.

• 10. E-Mail Names

  E-Mails are sometimes listed in the inbox under the email address and not the persons name, however clicking on the e-mail will show you their name not the e-mail address.

• 9. Heavy Data

  Replying to an e-mail always includes the senders message, this must be highly annoying for the recipient on a mobile phone, and increases data sent over the networks.

• 8. No Alert! :(

  Arriving e-mails don’t make the bell (or user editable) noise!! Only SMS do this, however in Japan people use e-mail in the same way other countries use SMS. So often, you don’t know if an email has arrived. Just a dull plunk noise that can’t be changed.

• 7. No Add to Contacts

  if someone sends you their e-mail address or phone number in an e-mail or SMS, when you click on it, iPhone wants to compose a new e-mail or call them, where as it should ask you if you want to save the email address to a new or existing contact, as well as calling/mailing them or canceling.

• 6. Emoji

  Japanese phones have the ability to send “emoji” which are basically a set of 100 or so smiley faces and icons. (that are also used on the Japanese equivalent to “WAP” mobile net to save bandwidth). Personally I don’t mind, save for the e-mails full of meaningless blank squares, which is annoying.

• 5. No Auto Draft (intermittent)

  When you have no reception or wifi and send an e-mail (for example on the train) sometimes the loading wheel just spins forever and the email is just lost, not saved as draft. Ideally the phone should know and not try to send and save a draft.

• 4. Contact Book is Slow

  Contacts list is insanely slow to load, I only have 151 contacts but it can take up to 10 seconds to load, before finding the email or number I need.

• 3. No Groups for contacts

  Adding a new contact does not let you file that contact away into a group (like “family” or “bitches”). In fact the only way to file a contact away into a group without adding them while in that group; sync with your computer’s address book; file contact into group; re sync with iPhone. (also you can’t make new photo groups [folders] and file photos, this all needs to be done on iPhoto)

• 2. Apple+C = no

  No copy and paste. Nuff said.

• 1. Arg the Pain!

  And number one, yep you might have guessed it; Japanese input hangs like a bastard. I can count 3 seconds between typing letters while the phone desperately searches some dark corner of the code libraries for the predictive Kanji. On a normal Japanese phone this is lightening-shit-off-a-shovel fast. This is the number one thing that needs to be updated as currently, it’s a royal pain in the arse for myself and people using the phone in Japanese, to type mails.

If you think about it they have had more than a year to make these bits better. Lets hope they do. (edit: 2.0.1 update didn’t list what was changed, no noticeable changes to the above)

In my vain attempt to get a sun tan X pump at the gym I’ve so far succeeded in only going red and torturing myself.

I have met a few interesting people though.

Last month I received a call out of the blue. Unsure as to who was calling me and exactly what they wanted (the conversation was in Japanese) I took the time to find out. Eventually during the conversation I somehow deduced that I was in fact being called by an editor wanting to feature a 6 page article about me in a Tokyo based web design magazine.

Web magazines are thin on the ground these days, since the bubble burst most publications went out of print. Therefore Web design note is a strange one, being virtually the only web design mag out on stands. A quick flick through the mag also reveals they have no advertising in the magazine it’s self — how they keep the magazine afloat financially is a bit of a mystery.

Later that month they came to interview me at eat’s office. Always good for a photoshoot, this office holds it’s own. The dangerously happy profile picture of me is another matter entirely. The article is only in Japanese, and as such we had to use a translator for the interview. Without translation (as they wanted to do at first) I’m sure they would have made me sound like an otaku. Actually this something to be wary of. As soon as you mention something like “akira” unfortunately you can be branded with the gaijin brush, although this is not to blame the people interviewing you as Japanese people have a reasonable interest of how their culture permeates in the minds of others. Just choosing my words carefully!

If you have time, pick up a copy. The magazine is out from today until September or so. My friend Carsten and his company Less Rain is also profiled, with their award winning work. The magazine is interesting, insightful and a sort of enigma in this age of web magazine drought.

Requirements are fairly simple, you just need to be super interested in making games for the iPhone with ample games programming experience. However this is not a paid partnership - it is purely revenue (royalties) only.

What I’m bringing to the table:

• many years of professional games company experience designing small, quick to play games.
• graphics! 3d and 2d
• unique game ideas
• dadako brand

What I need:

• experienced programmer, proficient in C++ and cocoa
• no commercial experience necessary
• interest in openGL 3d engine programming, especially with cocoa
• eager to see project through to completion
• ideally a mac user but not essential
• us, canada, france, uk or japan based (please do not contact me if you are not based in these territories, this is for financial reasons)

Initially I have a few well thought out and documented game ideas, which can be started asap as homebrew projects.

Contact me for more details!

As part of this we were asked to create a Japanese version of the one website, entirely built and localised by us. Myself and the programmer knew that we needed to untangle the site a bit so worked from scratch via my illustrator templates, instead of the existing code.

I guess the highlight of this is watching the “one” juggernaut  at work, with celebrities like (dr) Bono and Antony Gormley coming to Japan to support the effort. The entangled limbs of the respective charities do serve to provide a powerful voice this year, effects are noticeable - Japanese PM pledging more aid to Africa  already - and tanabata day is the pinnacle of this, when the G8 summit is held.

The global website they have is labyrinthine at best, so my job was to simplify things for Japan, which is still an emerging market for Pantone. I was asked to come up with an art direction then take it to production level after approval from the client. To my amazement head office approved the design straight away [even though it's very different to the global site]. Needless to say, they are very happy with it.

A few features of the new site are:

• colour coding. Each area of the site is a pantone colour combination - with corresponding swatch at the bottom of each page - which helps users remember which area a product belongs to.
• Rounded corners. For browsers that natively support them. Currently IE6 and IE7 have square corners, which also looks nice!
• Full validation. Pantone shop Japan is fully standards compliant.

Along with some other spicy things like jquery drop down transitions, hopefully this incarnation of the shop translates pantones image better to the Japanese audience than previous incarnations.

additional programming by Erik Johansson