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.

I am assuming myself to be a client who is on the lookout for a good design for his blog. What do i look for in my designer?

Portfolio

Firstly, i go straight for the portfolio section in our designers’ website. It defines him in the realms of aesthetic designs, accessibility results and client lists. Portfolios should not be vague and misleading. If I have two websites with one displaying the screenshots of their work and one linking to the original websites, i would be definitely convinced by the latter. The reason simply means i get to experience what his designs would feel like.

Spiga.com.mx , thewebdesigner and WillBlackmore.co.uk are good examples of  portfolios. They give proper details of what they have done and links and screenshots wherever necessary.

Website Design

Though his portfolio gets me the maximum of his design capabilities, a good website with minimal project listings also gets my attention.

Services

Services that my designer provides is also a measure for selection. The reason is closely associated with ‘loyalty of the customer‘ and ‘future projects’. For example I get my blog done with a designer who is only offering xhtml/css design with no flash oriented websites in his services list. I find his work appealing but still I would still prefer a design studio with a wide range of services. In the future I probably will come back to the same firm for a different kind of service.

Client List

An impressive array of popular clients can be very effective. Tofslie is one such portfolio. It has a good client base ranging from popular sporting brands like Nike and Adidas to Winter X Games champion Shaun White’s official website. That is impressive! Almost all the doubts about quality, accessibility and all the other criterion for selecting a designer reduces dramatically as the result of my website will be surely a good one.

Popularity

Someone popular in the blogosphere with a large number of loyal readers will automatically qualify as a good designer. They wouldn’t have been popular if their designs were bad. Bryan Veloso’s (the message is distorted?) and Veerle’s  happen to be my favourite bloggers. And surely their portfolios show that they are talented designers’ too. Besides getting your website done by such popular blogger/designers is always good for me and my business.

 Rates

Last but not the least, the rates he charges. Obviously when ‘high-end clients’ are catered by the designer, the rates go high. If it is a blog or a simple website with minimal number of features i would select a smaller, less exuberant design house. Nowadays finding one such designer is not at all a problem.

So i ask, ‘What do you look for in a designer?”

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.

Well it was just a page when i designed this blog. I simply entered it into the ‘404 error page competition‘. They liked my idea and quite surprisingly they tagged me under ‘Being Poetic’

“Jacob Thomas quotes Winston Churchill and informs lost visitors that the page they’ve been looking for seems to have been burnt down by a puckish elf called ‘Prontyr’.”

That quote thing was supposed to a random quote generator with lots of quotes showed. Too bad they saw only the Winston Churchill quote.  At least some part of this theme got some recognition.

For a beginner like me certain articles really helped. One of them would be ‘Coding Style‘ by Dionyziz. This article deals with a detailed description of why coding style is very important to a developer and how these can be used to improve the readability of the code. Since i have never worked in a real professional group, i haven’t yet felt the need of a coding style. Anyway from now on i may be forced to develop an own coding style focusing on readability and usability. He has also outlined some styles which can be used in very popular procedure oriented languages like PHP, Python, C, C++, Java and Javascript. However a structured presentation of CSS and XHTML is also beneficial.

“In Type we trust”

Well I’m not absolutely sure but the ‘editor’ speaks justice to what is written at their homepage Its good. really good and it is free.

“Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response. It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins. It makes development in any programming or scripting language quick and easy. “

I tried Intype and found it to be surprisingly fast..yeah..somewhat near to the so-called ‘lightning fast”. My quest for a good editor started from

1)Notepad: Well you can’t dismiss good old’ Notepad right away because its still a good editor even now.Still very reliable, simple and blah blah blah.

(Wordpad ??? yeah notepad, wordpad whatever)

2)PHP designer is a very good editor with lots of features but its very “memory consuming” for me.

3)Dreamweaver :No Comments( Still i will force one out!Loading time is so inspiring. )

4)Most of my coding was with this buddy, EditPlus.Its quite fast versatile and reliable.

5)Notepad++ I haven’t used it much but is also good especially with themes and all.

6)InType : I think i am gonna use this for a while but a few basic interface disabilities like “Where the hell is the close button for the tabs”? (Ctrl+F4) .Oh sorry!I will find more problems soon.Till then InType rules!!!

(the cobalt theme of Intype is notable.)

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]

Well another of my experiments with photoshop.It didn’t work out as well as i expected but seems good.Maybe someone might need a cool server icon..heehee.I shared what i have.Thats all.

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.