Now that we're almost two full months into 2010, some of us are wondering about the status of sculptor Michael Heizer's monumental, 200-acre work City, out in the Nevada desert. (Not terribly far, we note, from Rachel, NV and other large, mysterious desert installations.) Rumor had it that City was likely to be finished by the end of last year, but it's been radio silence since early 2009, when the de facto cancellation of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal facility turned out to be good news for Heizer and City.  

One can find City on Google Maps, but you probably don't want to consider driving out there--not only is it difficult to find, but Heizer takes a dim view of trespassing.  More background here and here. 

Ever look down when crossing the street and suddenly find yourself ordered to resurrect the dead on planet Jupiter?  You're not hallucinating; you've just encountered a Toynbee tile, evidence of what was at least once a spectacularly persistent, private obsession, or a highly individualistic art project.  We have at least three of these within walking distance of Actual Size World Headquarters.  

While the original maker seems to have passed on, a small number of people have become inspired to make new ones. When the weather warms up...will it be time, as the artist has urged us, to make and glue tiles? Stay tuned. 

Yes, this is the 21st Century, and some of us are a bit disappointed that we don't have a hovercraft in every garage.  Until then, we'll take the bus, and the bus riders among us really like the idea behind deeplocal's RouteShout mobile service. RouteShout sends bus schedule and routing info to your smartphone (or even a not-as-smart phone, if it supports text), so you'll know when the bus is scheduled to arrive at your stop.  It'd be even more useful, though, if the buses were feeding it live GPS data so we'd know when they will arrive.  Perhaps this will be coming in the Future (sooner, we hope, than hovercraft in every garage).

The last you heard about new people joining the forces of good here at Actual Size was over the summer. That's some old news. Both Mike and Kyle have moved on to greener pastures, and we're happy for them. Really. We are. *sniff*

Much more recently, though, we've added a new star among us, and his name is Steve. Steve Swackhammer joined us in early December, hit the ground running, and hasn't stopped yet. He's a front-end developer, and he's a welcome addition to our team. We've enjoyed getting to know Steve....he has a cat named Physics and when he completes a project he shouts "the hammer has fallen." 

For the last three years, we've partnered with our friends at The Century Council to create a holiday eCard, and every year, they make us raise the bar. For 2009, we created a game for them based on the arcade classic Frogger, called Holiday Hop. Instead of a frog, a family of gingerbread cookies is trying to cross the street without crumbling. As a twist, and to make this more relevant to The Century Council's message, we added drunk drivers to up the difficulty. So watch out!

We also used this game at their holiday event on the Hill (see their flickr set here), which was widely lauded as "the greatest Hill event ever." No lie. And if you can't tell in the photos, we made a custom "dance mat" for the game (similar to arcade dancing games), so you got to jump around to control your gingerbread cookie family.

So, as always, be careful on the roads this holiday season - don't drive drunk, and don't assume others are as smart as you are!

Happy holidays from Actual Size!

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We're very excited (okay, I'M very excited, and everyone else is reasonably excited) about Flashpitt09 this Thursday and Friday. This is the second year of what was a very cool one day conference about all things Flash. It has turned into a two day event this year, with a very impressive line up of both new and returning speakers. Dan Mall's Flash and Web Standards: Getting Along on the Playground is the presentation that I'm looking forward to the most.

The co-head honchos behind the curtain are our friends Val Head and Joe Kromer, the duo somewhat-better-known-as On The Fridge. Hope to see all you 'burghers and some new out of town faces there.

We haven't updated a single thing on our blog in 2 months. We'll make say some Our Fathers or run some laps as punishment.

In the meantime, our friends from Shady Grove have conceived a new restaurant, Freeport Pizza Kitchen. As an aside, this was one of the last projects that Kyle got to work on, before his internship ended, and he moved on to greener pastures. The logo he left us with is a frickin' sweet tomato on fire! What more would you like out of your pizza, other than some obvious spice, and to be fresh out of a fiery oven?

It's about to open in the next week or so, and we'll have a full update then. And a thorough review of their pizza, which will undoubtedly meet the expectations set by their new identity.

Nothing to report lately, at least nothing the general public is allowed to know about. See what I did there? I made it sound like we're working on stuff that you're not cool enough to know about! Now, in the back of your head, you think we're cooler than you did a few moments ago.

But seriously, we're talking to a few of our clients, and a few new potential clients, too. We'll introduce you once they are OK with everyone knowing that they're going steady with Actual Size. They've been burned before, and they don't want to get their mom's hopes up for grandkids.

In the meantime, we've been doing some renovating and painting, and also upgrading this very blog web page thingajig that you're looking at. You can now comment on what we're talking about and you can share our wisdom through the social network of your choice (I recommend Twitter, it's what the cool kids are doing, apparently). So poke around, let us know what you think.

In addition to Karl coming aboard recently, we've added two – not just one potential grifter, but TWO - new members to our team. Meet Mike and Kyle.

Mike is here or not. Depends on the day, talking to folks about all the projects we'd love to with them on. As a bonus, he's found the people watching to be tremendous in this part of town. And it is, believe me.

Kyle is as serious about design as he is about his beloved Red Sox. Although, he does have a soft spot for all things Pittsburgh, and would love for the Pirates to finally break that dreadful streak. Mainly out of pity, but they'll take all the support they can get.

It's getting crowded in here! Or maybe it was just sparsely populated before. Either way, welcome aboard guys - don't touch my yogurt in the fridge! (seriously.)