Of Balloons and Code

You may remember a while back that I wrote about my balloon project. I'll give you a moment to think back... right, let's get started.

Having finished all my Uni work now, I'm left at a mild loose end. So I thought what better time to get started on the I Found A Balloon website?

This was yesterday, and such is my boredom that I have now finished the first stage - the HTML and CSS. You can have a look here.

I decided to try LESS for the CSS code. LESS describes itself as a 'dynamic style sheet language'. Basically, it extends basic CSS with things like variables, operations and functions to make it a more dynamic language. You can take a look on the website for more examples - it's probably easier than me explaining it. It just makes CSS development quicker and more efficient.

I've also used a couple of CSS3 properties which you may or may not notice - border-radius to make the corners round and RGBA values for the semi-transparency. I was hoping to add the balloon and the cloud using the :before and :after pseudo-classes but for some reason that didn't work

So that's the layout and design pretty much done; now for the <sarcasm>fun</sarcasm> bit - PHP.

Someone said this morning that I wasn't a geek until I made a website for fun and then blogged about it, mentioning several geeky things. Here they are:

• You were eaten by a grue
• Myst
• C-basic
• 0100001001101001011011100110000101110010011110010010000001001110011101010110110101100010011001010111001001110011
• Cyborgs, pff, what do they know?

Is that geeky enough for you? Yes, I'm looking at you. You know who you are.

Balloon Project

An unprecedented amount of posts, I know, but I had an interesting idea after reading this. This guy took some photos with a camera hanging from a kite.

I had an alternative idea which was to use a makeshift hot air balloon made out of a bin bag or something which would double as a parachute for the descent. It would have a note asking people to send it back.

The problems with this were threefold: a) the hot air balloon might not get that high, b) the camera might break on landing, c) someone might just nick the camera.

Then I just thought 'screw the camera - let's just see how far one of these can get'. I thought I could just attach a note asking them to email me where and how they found it.

I then decided a helium balloon would work better instead and the note should be laminated to stop rain.

Now we just need to decide where the launch site is to be and what the note should say. It needs to be somewhere with a high density of people like London. But how do I get the balloons there in the first place? I might get some odd looks on the train. I could buy them up there I guess.

Then the note:

Dear Whoever You Are,

I see your curiosity got the better of you and you picked this up.

You have volunteered for a social experiment. The question is: are you willing to take a few minutes of your time to take part?

If you can spare the time, could you please post on ifoundaballoon.chamberlaindesign.co.uk with where and how you found this with a photo.

Thank you for your time and have a good day.

Chris Chamberlain

I'll post if I actually decide to do this and then I'll post any replies at ifoundaballoon.chamberlaindesign.co.uk