I’m Jacob Thomas

2007 was a very good year for me, if blogging is concerned. I had some great events which revolved around this blog. Last year i switched from wordpress.com to an independent blog at dynz.net. It was part of the ‘togetherness initiative‘ by the dynz. My co-workers blogs got attached to our company website and rest was the same.

Recognitions: 

In August, Smashing magazine selected my 404 page design for their ‘404 pages’ inspirational post.

That’s what does when you get listed in some popular blogging directories. Almost half of my traffic have come via Smashing magazine. Thats an incredible jump in Alexa rankings, link backs, back urls etc.

One Down!
In September, I celebrated my first year of blogging (a blog post..so much for the celebration.) . It listed down some of my prominent milestones in the last year.

Redesign: Only one redesign was applied to this blog, Sed.  As I said earlier its 404 page gained massive recognition. However i had released a lot of concept blog themes which ultimately had to be scrapped off!

Functions: As a medium to convey my ideas , my blog has helped me a lot. It made me reassert some facts in life. It made me think and review. Some of my common incertitudes were clarified with some excellent discussion.

Well, I wish 2008 would be even better.

Yay! So i complete my first year of blogging.

48 posts , 31 comments, (hundreds of spam!!), 1153 visits, 2160 pageviews.

That summarizes my maiden year in terms of figures. There are lots more than figure can say. This posts attempts to bring them out of the autodidact’s heart, sincerely.

First i started blogging through ‘theupwardautodidact.wordpress.com’, the public blog at wordpress.com. After that i moved to Opdyne server to setup a independent wordpress system.

Things i learnt:

POPULARITY

1) Rather than posting daily, a sensible post in a periodic interval would be more effective in terms of popularity and effort.

2)Blogging requires time…lots of it. I still don’t know a lot of things being discussed in the blogosphere. As a result i tend to take up many hours reading, researching on things i need to blog about. Checking comments, stats can be also very time-consuming.

3)Participation is important. If people need to know that you exist in some lousy corner of the immense gigantic blogosphere go get you ‘comment guns’ ready and discuss the latest sensational topics other bloggers write about.

PRESENTATION

1)The blog interface is never a necessary criterion for your blog popularity (except all those ones with beautiful blog themes and sensible posts.) A clean readable blog is preferred to a dark, dull theme. But then as always “Content is King!”.

2) This can go down to the posts while discussing design ethics of a blog but the most recent entry must be highlighted even if you title it “Don’t read this section“.

3)Typography: Your fonts need to be very precise and easy to read. People won’t strain a lot to make out your “a” and “z”. Font size is also important. A considerably large font may be labeled immature or childish. A tiny size would also be uncomfortable as it leads to user clicking the “Close tab” soon.

PERSONAL

1) Connecting my thoughts, musings to other people can have a no better portal.

2)<devlish>A blog is your weapon in crisis. If I have to make any point clear to anyone, I blog with all points stated clear ans straight forward and link back to the person in the article. Then follows the @#$%&&^$….. </devilish>

Blogmarks:

These are the different scars that this blog left of me since i launched it on August 30,2006 and now i proudly display them as tattoos.

1) Goodbye V2: Version 3 doesn’t signify a blog theme but it marks my change from http://upwardautodidact.wordpress.com/ to http://jacob.opdyne.com/ on July 3rd.I see this moment as one of one landmark event in the life of upward autodidact’s life this year.

2)Best Post:The best post to me was Topping the desktop on September 3rd, 2006.

3)Best Recognition:Smashing magazine’s 404 page recognition got me 222 visits and by far my best ‘traffic fattener’.

4)Best Comment:Asti’s comment on Inspiration-Rip.

This is an exclusive preview of an LF project.

LF, Liquid Fusion was a concept introduced late last year.  It has gone 3 years of rigorous development and is now the state-of-the-art programming platform that can revolutionize your programming concepts.

I had introduced LF briefly in my blog earlier but this time i have got an actual project to show you. One of the countless number of features of LF is the data manipulation from a web browser. Take for example, an imageboard. Simply stating, an imageboard is a forum that concentrates on images. What about it? You may ask. Often people  may need a software to download all the  images from a forum, a blog or even Flickr. What do you do? Hacking is not a friendly option. But  we sure can manipulate their data through the browser. LF add this feature where you can download the entire images from  an imageboard within seconds.

The interface is pretty primitive, but it was made in 5 minutes. It was used to download 350 images from different categories automatically. The concept is simple. Take the image from the browser cache. The LF program on the other hand ran into 4 lines. Woah! Pretty cool right? That interface you see is an HTML page in the LF browser. Amazing!

Eating out with veggies can be a big problem.Two of our team members at Opdyne happens to vegetarians.Now let me analyze.Vegetarians and web development?
hmm..Not that veggies can’t do development but,Meat rules!!!.I mean where is ‘the meat’ in the stuff they develop.?

Of course! After a sumptous meal for the Opdyne Annual at Park Rajadhani. I was forced to tell the guys.”Yep!It was Bad!”.

Face it buddy! The food was really good. Hmm What else could i do? I have to work with them for some more years. I got to have a good relation with then until we split. (Split! Not in a million years!). From Plato to Gandhi , all of them advocated a good vegetarian diet.

Vegetarians are believed to have 40% less chance of getting forms of cancers compared to meat-eating machines.Another good point is the have comparatively less blood pressure due to high fibre content and lower viscosity of the blood. That means more qualities of patience , stress and a smiling “No!” . Then that should prove that they can work long hours in a stretch without grumbling or any sort of discomfort.(I must demand for less working hours!!!). Those hapless professionals on a non-veg diet tend to live shorter than their veg counterparts.OMG!

To all my fellow non-veg developers out there, eat less meat and live on low fat, high fibre food!!!

Wait!The lunch break siren!!What do they have?.Ahhhhhhh!!

Nice looking biriyani with a reddish yellow tint with minced meat sprinkled all over garnished with green coriander leaves with tomatoes and 2 eggs floating in the richness of rice and butter(MOM!How could you!I just preached ……)

[Sound of someone washing his hands]

This post may be directed towards a community with high intellectual values but poor socialization or maybe to a person with the same problems transcended in enormous proportions! A man is basically a whole junk of whopping crap if he can’t understand what it feels like to work with teammates. Yeah!Thats right I’m talking about a the problem of undefined protocols and a group that’s struggling to make an identity.

Let me rewind to months back when the whole concept of Opdyne was given birth too..

jac_acme: Daey i am gonna start a site
jac_acme: u in?
intelinsidepranthanoutside: yep
intelinsidepranthanoutside: name?
intelinsidepranthanoutside: wats it abt?
jac_acme: dunno
jac_acme: i am just seeing it as a learning experience

That was it . The real genesis.. behind the screen.. behind this wonderful minimalistic blog and all the young weird of the world ideas. The brainchild, Opdyne was a concept that could have led its way into oblivion. But some really good spirit pumped it all the way to a success. Not that its a smashing or dandy in appearance,but it was our concept come true. I really love it. After years of studying all theory and doing nothing productive, that was a moment of absolute happiness and a sense of victory engulfed us. Its really sad why this venture comes to a dead end. I never considered my team members as my teammates. Moreover it was like a group of friends coming together and doing some work for fun. After all the motto of opdyne was,”Work for fun and learning”. True!. It was a motto so far fetched that i had to fill in my real experiences with fantasies to complete it.

A great man, once remarked.

“Anyway, do whatever it is that you must. When you have finally understood what I’ve said (since you so obviously haven’t, judging by your quotes) we’ll sort this out. Go and think.”

Little does he know what the person he is accusing hasn’t anything other than the prestigious post of being a member of Opdyne. And this is my statement.I will say it loud and clear.

“I love Opdyne.”

Recently, Opdyne got an offer for the logo design of iHostQ.com ; a new hosting company.They wanted a simple but a different one. Here is a simple vector mockup.

The very first time i saw a website(probably yahoo), i didn’t want to read the content in it…rather i searched for “making a website”. Yes! That search didn’t make any sense to a 6th grader back then but i definitely knew one day i would know it for sure.

Years have passed by, Here I’m celebrating what’s best know equivalent my life right now.

Opdyne.

During my days at Loyola, i used to hear stories about our seniors doing amazing things in the’ webosphere’. During my long, boring vacation after my entrance exams (which i messed quite bad!), i was searching for a good, productive way to spend time.Reading some blogs was a main cause for the initiative to start Opdyne. As always had a liking to do something creative all that time because some weird, uncanny instinct makes the work quite fun for me!

I started slowly… reading small tutorials in Photoshop (the glass orb was a good start!) . I realized that i had something to survive in the the hostile world for a newbie. After that i did watch arun (already established artist) at work. The way he produced wonderful computer generated imagery with a handful of harmless clicks and curves really got me inspired to be glued to the PC for the next two months.

“…emerged from the cocoon, was a beautiful butterfly fluttering in the wind with gracility and charm. Quite sensitive were its receptors to the outside world, spreading its beneficence to every single object in its surroundings.”

OMG! Sorry but that was a sudden emote due to all ‘excessive grammar classes’ i had with DP(once in a year). Well, anyway i got into full swing after that…. jumping around frantically like a monkey from the ‘branch of code’ to the nearby ‘design tree’. It was fun. I really enjoyed learning many new and exciting things at Opdyne. I may sound like i am going to stop tomorrow but have “miles to go before i sleep”.

Back when we started we had a client by the name hostrs.com. It was a web hosting company and needed a redesign package. Unfortunately they shut down their service and sold the domain and server.

This collection of theme were prototypes for their new design. Now, we are offering these themes as premium templates and are available at a very low cost.

Starting from 10$.

If anyone is interested drop a mail here or (mail to opdyne@gmail.com). Here are some screenshots.

Halycon theme of Opdyne has served us well and now it is time to redesign the design wing homepage.The process is currently being completed.Opdyne V2, code named ‘Klusita’ will be all set for launch soon.We were so impressed that we are giving away the color theme,text styles etc in this sneak peek.The theme is very simple focuses on less images and more usability. Halcyon was unique and couldn’t be very easy navigating that. Enjoy the small peeks.The date of release is fast approching.