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?”

2007 was a year of reassertion for me. The year gave me new perspectives, new dimensions of thought and identification of some unique skills. Now when i look back, like every human being, i feel an element of regret saddening my heart. “I could have done better”. Be it my decisions or be it my outlook towards life, every single line i spoke could have been rephrased to a much more sinless speech. I feel.

Below are some of my inferences about the events that happened to me this year.

Opdyne: My ‘zero rupee’ Opdyne showed little or less signs of competitiveness in the vast and talented web designer’s world. The positives i got were the improvement factor. We have come way better than the day when we dressed up as designers ourselves. We had problems working together in a group. We had problems related to communication during constructive phases of projects. It were all sorted out so that we could welcome the new year with renewed energy , a new belief and some surprise plans.

Sometimes its best if you take the lead of your group and preach new ideologies. Sometimes its best if you stay back and receive suggestions for improvement.

New initiatives are demanding. It can consume a lot of time, energy and precious social time.

New initiatives, new domains of involvement… a new stage of recognition. Still there is something lacking in my deeds. What is it? The very human side of me is refusing to allow the very perfect me. Ironically our mind wants to strive for the perfect 10/10 when in reality the end result halts before that mark.

“To err is to human, to forgive is divine”. I will use this as an excuse to relieve me of all punishments. Oh wait! Asti warned me to stop writing ’senseless crap’ but in another world this maybe great work. Someone please tell him! Promising you more sensible blog posts in 2008. Bye.

Kwaaaaaaaaaaa!!! [That’s what i think is the sound on a new born.]

A child is born! Dad is excited.He thinks about what all he has to do. After lots of talk, discussions and fights with Mum, the baby gets a name.

Next up in the ‘To Do List’ for Dad’s is all the municipal formalities including the ‘Birth Certificate’. Since it is the new-age of advanced ‘blah blah’ , people just don’t finish with that.

The ‘Youngest PAN Card Holder in India’ was Krishhey Thacker (aged 56 days then) but recently Akshita, 50 day old girl beat him in the record hunt.

The online identity is getting even more established as the person’s alternative identity as infants get their own domain at the age of ..err…on the day they are born.I know designers and developers getting so excited to know that their newborn is due soon.The excitement makes them do all kinda stuff. Buying them their own domain is just one in the ‘normal’ type.

In a CNN online article, It was written

“Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won’t likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name. Still, even if the effort is for naught, $9 a year is cheap compared with the cost of diapers and college tuition.”

Corrie Pankow, pictured with daughter Makenzie, has claimed domain names for her children.

Many of these parents believe that their child’s domain name will not be available by the time their children reach their teens. Well if people go on buying Domain names, web spaces , registering in social networking sites like MySpace or even activating a personal GMail account for their children…yep! it is not a distant reality.

Courtesy:CNN.com, Rediff News

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!

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.

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.

This is not any devkit or anything that is meant for making new classy web products. I prepared this image templates for a site associated with the Dynz network. Later we had to switch to a different color theme so these remained untouched. That means anyone who feels like seeing the source of these images can download this web pack, customize, rip and create even better image work.

Well … The download button in this pack is created using Maxon Cinema 4D and Photoshop. The tutorial for creating that button is creating such an image is listed at Opdyne.It explains some of my unorthodox methods of dealing artwork with Photoshop.