Tag: Developer

Domain Speculation: Case Study #1

Dear Sir or Madam,

I recently had a great idea for a mini site, but when I arrived home to register the domain I see you had already beaten me to it by a month. Well played. Through an intermediary I pursued, inquiring if you might be open to selling. I offered a small but reasonable price, inline with third-party appraisals. It would have netted you a nice profit for an obscure two word phrase that has no history.

Your counter offer asking price of $750 is ridiculous. Thank you, but no; you can keep it.

If you ever do something with it I’ll let go of my disdain for you, but I suspect it will forever be parked for free.

Signed,
The Dam of Knowledge

Anyone have any good luck purchasing domains or getting those on back order? Seems like a nice little scam for the registrars. If my opinion ever changes I’ll let you know.

Posted on by Joel

Emily Hoskins’ Portfolio Launched

I’m proud to announce the completion of my friend Emily’s new photography portfolio. I’m really please with the way it turned out. It was a smooth project to work on, the only goals were that it were clean and simple to use, and that it look better than all of her friend’s photgraphy sites ;). Done and done.

The only snag that came up was near the end of the project when I upgraded to the newest version of SlideShowPro. The old param.xml file no longer worked so I had to compare the new version’s attributes to the old and port back all the old styles. A frustrating couple hours for sure.

Simple photography portfolio site includes:

  • Design
  • SlideshowPro Photo Gallery Customization

View Live Site

Posted on by Joel

Pre-programmed Randomness

That’s a pretty consistent theme in all of my interactive work… randomness. It’s a perfect way to introduce variety and gives a project a little bit of the feel of playing a (very simple) game. Your reward for returning is a little bit of new information, and if the experience is enjoyable enough why not keep hitting that refresh button?

Truth is, it’s also nice cover for a site like this where updates and new info may be sporadic. Keeps it fresh without having to update every single day (a big reason I retired the first site, creative burnout). Google loves it too, trust me.

Anyways, today I finally added a little bit of randomness around here, setting up the next development step for the site. For now the sample set is pretty small so it might not appear very random at all, but it’s just proof that it could work on something larger.

Two things:

  1. Never used PHP inside JavaScript code before, but I’m using it here to pull up a random profile pic. A feature that I’d love to see on Facebook.
  2. Getting a random post displayed out of WordPress is extremely easy. Why would I use an extra plugin? Here’s what my code looks like: 
    <?php $rand_posts = get_posts('numberposts=1&category=5&orderby=rand'); ?>
<?php foreach( $rand_posts as $post ) : setup_postdata($post); ?>
The code block for one of those front page features would go here, blah blah blah.
<?php endforeach; ?>

Both of these are just stop gaps on the way to moving the Google map code over to XML, which will allow so much more flexibility.

Posted on by Joel

Hello (Again), World

Every programming project starts with the basic “Hello, world!” This isn’t exactly that.

I’ve been tweaking this particular version of The Dam for just over 2 years. It’s “hello world” moment looked like this back in 2007:

dam_v7

A fullscreen Google map with Lightbox. Really just a prototype, it’s meaning and purpose weren’t very… apparent; but it was the first new site for me in a few years, ever since starting work for my employer after graduation. You see, those first few years left me sapped. Spending 10+ hours a day working on web projects, the last thing I wanted to do when I came home was work on the web some more. So I retired the original (v.3) Dam of Knowledge, hoping to create something better later.

There were several false starts over the years to get something new up and running. Version 5 was just a giant picture of my guinea pig. Another was a Flash site that would be filled with a random array of portfolio pieces… clicking each “pixel” of an abstracted image would launch a viewer and uncover a piece of a larger picture. It looked something like this:

dam_v61

Actually, looking back on it today, it is still a good idea, it had a lot going for it. Unfortunately I have a little pattern of abandoning projects like this when my interest wanes or shifts to something else. Hence moving on to the Google map prototype. That was soon neglected in favor of ActionScript 3 video experiments, which turned into the sibling site JoelSunman.com.

Last year I decided to start fleshing out the interface and content of both, also give the two a more unified look and feel. Unable to decide which site should be the personal video of the day experiment, and which should be the more professional portfolio, it seemed best to just make everything every thing and finally merge them as one. Hence the “Joel Sunman & The Dam of Knowledge.” I like it, it sounds like James and the Giant Peach (something I’ve neither read nor seen).

What’s Next?

The basic concept is here now. I’m still sticking with the Google map interface since it offers a lot of interesting possibilities, but the next step will be tying everything into the back end. WordPress, the same CMS powering this blog, will eventually control everything from the map portfolio and featured project highlights to the video-a-day XML. Getting all this various data into a uniform format will allow me to change the front end much easier down the line.

Beyond that I still want this as a place to collect all my development experiments, random little thoughts, and interesting travels. I have a lofty goal with the video-a-day project (probably better named “image-a-day,” since it won’t/can’t always be video) to work my way back through the years and backdate entries in order to expand my little personal timeline I talked about in Goodbye MySpace.

So let’s get started (again)…

program HelloWorld(output);
begin
  WriteLn('Hello World!');
end.
Posted on by Joel

Matt Cassatta’s Portfolio Launched

Everybody needs a website. Everybody, even best friends/copywriters.

When you have a particular skill set you will find yourself using those skills over and over for friends and family, for free. Such was the case when my buddy Matt decided to get on the Internet and showcase his advertising work.

To keep things ultra simple I went with a one page layout with a dash of jQuery thrown in for some smooth scrolling between the sections. JW Player provides the playback controls for all the multimedia, keeping updates simple to the XML. I think the single page layout is really straightforward and effective for a résumé-type site and it lets his personality shine through.

Simple portfolio site includes:

  • Design
  • jQuery Animation
  • Flash Video Playlists

View Live Site

Posted on by Joel