For the frequency with which Georgia is mentioned around here, one might think we here at Actual Size World Headquarters would be fairly educated about President Mikhail Saakashvili's country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia (pop. 4.3 million), more so than just being able to rattle off some of the republic's top exports (scrap metal, wine, fruit). But this couldn't be further from truth!

Our experience with Georgia is primarily limited to using the eponymous typeface, and the main reason for that is not our love for serifs with enormous x-heights, but rather the fact that there are so few typefaces that you can safely use on the web, and Georgia is one of the nicer options.

Fortunately for people like us (and in turn, people like you, our clients, friends and countrymen), new options are emerging. Typekit is "a subscription-based service for linking to high-quality Open Type fonts from some of the worlds best type foundries." Which means web designers can use more fonts! Which is all we really like to do. (I have literally like a HUNDRED fonts on my computer. No lie.) Now there are also other options emerging, like Fontspring, which use a new format of font file to give you what you want. Options are good, right?

So, without further ado, Actual Size presents our first projects incorporating new web font technology (in this case, Typekit's service), a couple of small, brilliantly fancy sites for our friends at Shady Grove (www.eatshady.com) and Walnut Grill (www.eatwalnut.com)!

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).

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.

Today, along with a quarter million of our closest friends, we celebrated the second championship of the 2009 for our fair city. The parade for the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins (the 'guins as I like to call 'em) came by Actual Size World Headquarters around 12:15 today. We watched from the observation deck, as the crowds jostled for position beneath us. We were quite worried about the Cup at one point, but it was apparently a tin foil replica that was dropped on the street. Whew.

We'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Penguins on a great season, and hope that some of that rubs off on our beloved, somewhat downtrodden Pirates. Maybe they all need to grow beards?

When a trail of blood was discovered outside of Actual Size World Headquarters during what was supposed to be a safe and relaxing lunch hour, Mary put her inner-detective to work. With her nose to the pavement, Mary followed the trail to its source in the sports store around the corner. She questioned several would-be witnesses, but they refused to cooperate. The mystery remains unsolved, though it is widely believed that the victim bled then fled the scene by bus.