Blog » April 2010

Success!  We completed our chick trickery last night, and when mom woke up, she had many new babies!

New chicks arrived 1 hour ago!  This year we ordered 35 males that are all different breeds (so many, in fact, that we have no idea which ones are which), and just like last year, we are cordially inviting the broody hen to raise them for us. 

We know it's best to sneak the chicks beneath mom at night, when all chickens are rather dazed, but we decided to see what would happen if we snuck in all 35 in the day.  It partially succeeded; she took about 8-9 underneath her before starting to peck at all the ones that were wondering about.  Given yesterday's snow, it's a bit chilly outside, so we quickly snatched up all the unlucky chicks for a second attempt this evening.

In the mean time, all the non-mommed chicks are in a box with food, water, and sources of warmth.

We often get inquiries from clients, partners, and perhaps the occasional stranger, about our farm and office, and we haven't elaborated on our environs beyond the About Us statements.

Well, that's easy to answer:  the office and farm are really the same thing.  Our solar-powered office is located on the second floor of the farm, and it's a lovely place to program with these here computers.  We have a lovely view of some beaver ponds, a brook, the animal spaces (including the former pig space, which is being used for blueberries, pear trees, garlic, lingonberries, and kiwis this year), and trees, trees, and more trees. Eileen and I both agree that the view is far better than from any office building that we've ever worked (even the awesome spaces of San Francisco!).

After a lovely warm April (it was about 65 on Sunday), it snowed 12 inches today.  So today's view includes some budding trees and lots of white!

Yes, that picture was taken today.

That skinny green thing in the center of the photo is one of our large lilacs. It just started unfurling its leaves 2 days ago, so it'll be nicely leafed in 2-3 weeks.

Earth day is here, and rather than talk about how spectacularly earthy we are, I'm going to talk about money and agriculture.

Most of you know that webmeadow is very into agriculture.  Back in city life, we noticed how little contact we had with our food sources, not having any real sense of where our food came from or how it was produced.  In moving to rural New Hampshire, we have become much more involved with our food sources:  raising small flocks of animals, having some wee veggie gardens, and participating in the Old Shaw Farm CSA.

We've learned massive amounts about raising animals and, more recently, plants (as we get further in the growing season, we'll hopefully have some great pictures of the blueberries, gooseberries, kiwis, and pear trees), and the biggest thing I've learned is how much everything we do is connected with the earth.  Realizing how important that connection is to us, we set out to help other people.

There are some fantastic charities in the world, like Heifer International, that donate agriculture basics (animals, seeds, etc.), enhance the donation by teaching sustainable techniques for growing the farm, and then require those farmers to help other farmers in the same ways in the future.  One of the things that struck us about charities like Heifer, however, is that while your donation is framed as "1 goat and 12 chickens" to a farm in the world, really your donation goes into the big pool that Heifer uses to do all of its works.  There's nothing wrong with that, but we wanted more hands-on impact.

Then we heard about Kiva, an organization that uses micro-loans to improve lives all around the world.  While micro-loans can seem, well, small, they have a huge impact (in fact, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went to a micro-loan pioneer).  With Kiva, we realized that we could improve the lives of specific people, and that because those people would be repaying the loan over time (with interest), we could lend even more money to others in the future -- quite a sustainable model.

We jumped on board in November 2009 by creating the agriculturally-focused Friends of Spruce lending team (named after one of our geese).  The Pixels & Pulp team immediately joined the group, and thus far we've been able to help more than 19 people!  Helping a specific number number of people, like 19, and being able to read updates from them makes us feel like our impact is very real.  In fact, if you'd like to increase the impact, feel free to join our lending team by clicking the "Join Now" button on the Summary page.

Earth Day is about focusing on our impact on the earth.  Today, at least 19 people around the world are able to connect with the earth more sustainably because of the micro-loan lending model.

Since we're still on the concept of fonts here at webmeadow HQ, let's talk about Typekit, one of the most exciting things to happen to web design in many years.  We've been talking amongst ourselves about Typekit going on a year, so we thought it was time to share.

As most of you know, websites have been limited to a core set of fonts that are shared across various computer operating systems.  So, when designers create sites that use non-web-safe fonts, the question always becomes where to keep the font (and use a graphic) and where to make it web-safe (and use plain text).  As programmers, we like plain text because it can be used by everyone on all platforms (the hearing impaired, the visual impaired, the Internet Explorer 6 impaired, etc.).  Graphics look nice, but they're not particularly versatile.

To be fair, there have been some solutions to this problem in the past, like sIFR, but they've always felt like too much of a hack for our tastes.  We tend to like graphically stunning websites with elegant behind-the-scenes code.

Enter Typekit.  All of a sudden, there is a gigantor font library that everyone can view (yes, even Internet Explorer 6).  And even better for my sanity, Typekit is web standards compliant -- no more hacking to make a non-web-safe font appear!

The only potential drawback is that Typekit is a subscription-based service that has costs associated on a per-website basis.  As professional website developers, we actually view that as a bonus, because that means the Typekit folks are always improving their service.

Thanks Typekit -- we welcome the next stage of the web!

We recently came upon a great article by Hoeffler & Frere-Jones about combining multiple fonts in a single work.  We work with fabulous designers who know how to combine fonts in their sleep, but in our own lives and personal projects, we are always on the lookout for nice rules-of-thumb for graphic layout.

Hoeffler & Frere-Jones present four palette concepts, each complete with short, compelling descriptions and shorthand for roles that the fonts play.  My favorite concept is 'wit', mostly because each of the font roles is broken into 'tough', 'cheeky', and 'sweet'.  There are already some Christmas gift applications coming to mind!

Perhaps with the concepts from H & FJ, you can make your own newsletters, birthday cards, and other projects have a bit more impact, too.