Posted on 28 October 2012
I thought I would post a (long overdue) update on my employment situation.
Back in late July (I think...), my old employer, DMDN, could not pay use due to our major client bringing us with them when they went out of business. DMDN was a fantastic company with an exceptional team, which I will try as best as I can to keep in contact with. I learnt so much that I wouldn't have even tried if I continued to freelance. The company breaking up obviously left me in a bit of a slump as I was processing it as best as an 18 year old could.
Thankfully, I had a friend working at Black Milk Clothing as a web developer (with only one other dev to help) and as such, they were looking for developers. Although they used PHP, which I very rarely use unless I have to (I am not a fan of the langauge), they promptly hired me after I sent my details through in early September.
I have had a great time at Black Milk and have already made my mark on the site. Technically all the developers (all 3 of us :P) are employed as IT guys, so we pretty much have control over any tech stuff in the company, which is great. It also means that we can approach problems however we feel. Ive already finished a small project using Ruby, Sinatra and Backbone.js, and I'm currently working on something using Clojure (which is a lot of fun, I might add).
I look forward to a lot of fun projects in the future with Black Milk!
Last week I applied for a job due to only having two subjects at uni this semester. After getting an interview the next day, and coming in for a short trial after that, I am quite happy to say that I am now a full time front-end web developer at DMDN. Everyone there is really friendly and the studio itself is awesome. I'm doing some pretty cool stuff with javascript (predominantly animated things), along with html and css (I also managed to convert the other front-end dev I am working with to LESS).
While I am loving it here, the downside is that I can not do freelance work, both due to time and contractual reasons. I will be finishing a few smaller jobs in the next couple of weeks and post them on here, but after that It will just be uni work and small (mostly open-source) side-projects that I post on here for the foreseeable future.
Posted on 09 June 2012
I finally finished all of my uni assignments for the semester this week. One
assignment I am particularly happy about is a design proposal and prototype I
had to create for an iPad magazine for the QUT fashion student's magazine;
Frock Paper Scissors.
Instead of submitting the proposal as a plain old printed document, I decided
to create a small single page website. Using images from the Frock Paper
Scissors website, I managed to make a pretty good looking site. The content
isn’t awesome (like most uni students, I left it until the last minute), but I
am really happy with the design.
You can view it here.
Do note that it is REALLY unoptimised and uses absolutely
massive images, so It will take a while to load. Wait until it's finished
loading before scrolling for the best experience. Let me know what you think!
The Prototype
Also, you can
view the prototype here.
This will only work on webkit browsers as far as I know. It works pretty great
on an iPad, as intended. It also only works in landscape mode.
Posted on 22 February 2012
I decided not too long ago that I would try and help out my mum and learn some
new skills by making a (primarily client-side) web app to handle finances for
vending machine companies or owners. I am calling it Vendotron and it is
made using the standard HTML5 and CSS3 graphical goodies, along with
backbone.js (and require.js) to power it. I haven't done much javascript apart
from some jQuery here and there to spice up pages, so it has been interesting
so far.
As you can see in the picture above, I have already got a nice design down. I
have also implemented adding vending machines to your inventory, but the rest
is still in progress (also, there is no persistence yet). It is completely
open source, but I will probably charge for use of it on my servers (standard
SaaS deal).
You can see what I have in action and
check out the source. Let me know if
you have any suggestions (design or code wise), or if you want to help me out!
Posted on 22 October 2011
Just last night, I finished an assignment using Adobe After Effects where we had to create almost any sort of video, as long as we used AE.
This was my submission. It is basically a promotional video to advertise my skills. Most of the graphic design work (apart from Brainchild)
has been for assignments. Do note that I don't actually do animation, so the bit at the start was just to fill in time (it had to go from 1
to 2 minutes long).
Let me know what you think!
Posted on 12 October 2011
So I finally got around to re-designing my website, with a focus on content,
and not the layout itself. You may notice that it is responsive, so it looks
good on pretty much any sized device. You'll also notice that on each page,
I now have a last.fm widget on the bottom of each page, so
you can see what I've been listening to recently.
I drew a lot of inspiration from
Elliot Jay Stocks new website, which is very
minimalist and uses the same font size for everything (which I have done on
this site). If there is anything you would like to see added to my site, or
if you want to contact me for any other reason, just fill out my
contact form.
Let me know what you think!
Just out of boredom today, I decided to make a sort of CSS reset for
myself. Technically it's more base styles than a reset seeing as it
has a lot of styling rather than just removing margins and padding.
I haven't really tested it (OK, so not at all tested it), but I thought
other people may like it. Here it is in it's uncompressed glory:
EDIT: I have tested it in Webkit and Gecko (chrome and firefox) and
it works beautifully. I have also made a preview page. You can check it out
here.
/*
* Tom Brunoli's CSS Base Styles
* Updated 2011-05-12
*
* Licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
* http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
*
*/
/* Basics */
html, body { margin: 0; padding: 0; background: #efefef; color: #444; }
body, input, select, button,
textarea { font: 13px/24px "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; }
body { overflow-y: scroll; }
p { margin: 0 0 24px 0; }
a { outline: none; }
a:focus { outline: 1px dotted invert; }
img { border: 0; }
/* Headings */
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { margin: 0 0 24px 0; font-weight: bold; color: #222; }
h1 { font-size: 24px; line-height: 24px; }
h2 { font-size: 22px; line-height: 24px; }
h3 { font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; }
h4 { font-size: 18px; line-height: 24px; }
h5, h6 { font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; }
/* Lists */
ul, ol { margin: 0 0 24px 0; padding: 0; }
ul ul, ul ol, ol ol, ol ul { margin-left: 60px; margin-bottom: 0; }
ul { list-style: disc outside; }
ol { list-style: decimal outside; }
/* Quotes */
q, blockquote { font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-style: italic; }
blockquote { margin: 0 0 24px 0; padding: 0 0 0 20px;
border-left: 4px solid #ccc; }
/* Code */
code, ol.code, pre { font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, Courier;
background: #222; color: #fefefe; font-size: 12px; }
pre, ol.code { padding: 24px; line-height: 18px;
overflow: auto; list-style-position: outside; }
code { display: inline-block; padding: 0 6px; }
ol.code li { margin: 0 0 0 24px; white-space: pre; }
/* Tables */
table { width: 100%; margin-bottom: 24px;
border-bottom: 2px solid #999; }
caption { line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold; }
tbody, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
th { border-bottom: 2px solid #999; }
td { padding: 2px 6px; }
tbody tr:nth-of-type(odd) { background: #ddd; }
/* Forms */
form { margin-bottom: 24px; zoom: 1; }
form:before, form:after { content: ""; display: table; } /* Clearfix */
form:after { clear: both; } /* Clearfix */
label { display: block; margin-bottom: 24px; }
input, button, textarea { color: #444; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px solid #999; }
input, button { height: 24px; float: left; margin-right: 12px;
display: block; padding: 0 12px; }
textarea { display: block; padding: 12px; }
input[type=submit], button { cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px; }
input:focus,
input[type=submit]:hover,
button:hover, textarea:focus { background: #fff; border-color: #666; outline: none; }
/* HTML5 Elements */
article, hgroup, header, footer,
section, aside, nav, figure,
figcaption, video { display: block; }
You can download a minified version here. It's licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribute-ShareAlike licence.
Hopefully someone else can make use of it. I'd love to know if you do use it, so just submit a
comment (if disqus decides to work), or send me an email!
After realising that Tumblr has really gotten popular recently, I've decided
to make a tumblr theme. I got a tumblog back when tumblr was in it's infancy
and just never used it. I'm currently finishing up the theme and still have
to test it in browsers other than Chrome and Firefox (yay…). I'm still on the
fence on whether I should sell it or not (Uni life isn't kind to my
wallet—some money to spend on lunch would be nice). If I do, I'd sell it for
$AUD15 on my website here. You can view the theme as I build and test it
here.
In it's current state, my website is virtually finished. I'm sure
to change things as time passes, either gradually improving, or
completely revamping the site.
I hope everyone likes it as it is! Let me know what you think
(once comments are working of course).
Hey there! I've finally decided to upload my portfolio for
the world to see! You'll probably notice that this site isn't
quite complete, but I decided to upload it on a whim.
At the moment, I am not available for work—I just started
university, so I'm a little bogged down, but as soon as I
am available, I will post on my blog.