GuitarTricks.com
· On line guitar lessons
· PHP / MySQL

Guitar Tricks is the primary player in the on-line guitar learning space. I regularly add new features to this site using PHP, MySQL, CSS, Ajax, Subversion, Apache, VPN, Rackspace and related Web technologies. Developer.



 
prance.com
· Ski resort information displays
· Database driven
· PHP, MySQL, XML backend
prance.com displays continuously updated information on Flash/Flex powered public displays throughout America's top ski resorts. My contributions include converting ASP/Access applications into PHP/MySQL, creating public XML feeds, and stopping peak-season server crashes. Back-end Rescue; Created APIs.


 
FreeStagePlots.com
· Musician's tool
· Interactive graphic manipulation
· CMS Administration
FREE Stage Plots dot com allows musicians to easily prepare high-quality diagrams of their on-stage performance requirements. Images are manipulated via JavaScript, rendered via PHP, and saved in MySQL. Developed front and back-end.


 
planetshifter.com
· World Policy Discussions
· Drupal Technology
· Multimedia content
PlanetShifter.com lists well over a thousand interviews with policy makers in the green movement seeking to fundamentally improve our world. Implemented


 
3 Letter Dictionary
· Database driven
· Scientific experiment powered by PHP/MySQL and JavaScript
· On-line dictionary
· Off-line book
3 Letter Dictionary offers a blend of scientific research and contemporary art. A description of this project appears in an article I wrote for the current issue of the MIT Press, peer-review journal, Leonardo, titled, "A Reward-Driven Process for the Local, Noospheric, and Computational Detection of Stochastic Deviation Fields." Designed and Developed.



 
Astoria Railroad Preservation Association
· 50+ pages
· KeepItCurrent
ARPA is in the process of completely restoring a 1925 Baldwin steam locomotive. They use KeepItCurrent to maintain photographic documentation of their restoration discoveries and efforts. Installed CMS.



 
Lincoln High School Alumni Association
· On-line sign-up
· Database driven
· KeepItCurrent
The Lincoln High School Alumni Association's (Portland, Oregon) official web presence. Installed CMS.



 
Needle Arts Mentoring
· 30+ pages
· KeepItCurrent
The Helping Hands Foundation of Zanesville, Ohio unites mentors and children in an after-school program, teaching the art of knitting. This rapidly growing program is now established in 14 states. Designed and Developed.


 
Rex Ziak
· 50+ pages
· Flash video
Emmy award winning Rex Ziak shares his enthusiasm for history, nature and the plain-spoken truth. Worked with Graphic Designer.

pplication utility development is an essential part of modern Web systems. My "back-end" efforts include creating public APIs, Content Management Systems, administrative reports, data analyzers, Web scrapers, the inevitable fixers, and system integrity verification tools. Here are some examples:

• Prance's public API provides real-time ski resort data to iPhone apps (help page).
• Prance's public API (real-time ski lift data).
• General-purpose Content Management Systems (demo/pass is login for this example).
• Is PHP pretty? Examine my code.
• General-purpose reports (results of running above code).

echnologies and paradigms contibuting to the successes of these Web development efforts include:

• ActionScript
• Ajax
• CSS Standards Compliance
• Example Code
• Flash
• LAMP
• MySQL
• MVC
• n-Tier Architecture
• Object-Oriented Programming
• Perl
• PHP
• XML

ActionScript is the authoring language for the ubiquitous animation engine of the Web, the Flash Player. ActionScript's ability to facilitate background n-Tier communications makes Flash an attractive alternative to Ajax: Flash is enabled on more browsers and, being compiled, is less likely to crash.

Ajax is a JavaScript technology implemented via a non-standard XMLHttpRequest class to facilitate background n-Tier communications makes the browser and a server. Ajax is often implemented as part of a JavaScript library such as jQuery. Its functionality is very similar to that obtained by ActionScript's URLLoader classes.

Creating sites that pass the W3C validation service helps ensure a consistent user experience, regardless of client platform. While most sites listed here are compliant, there are clients who prefer their legacy sites.

Code should never be inscrutable. Miraculous code, no matter how remarkable its results, will ultimately prove worthless if no one can understand it. I strive to make my programs transparent. See for yourself. Examine my code.

LAMP refers to the widespread confluence of these four (or five) technologies as a Web hosting platform. Most of the sites listed on this page are LAMP lighters.

MySQL is the robust relational data storage engine used by most of these sites.

MVC, Model - View - Controller, is a segmentation methodolgy for the logical structuring of programming efforts. Web sites which adhere to the MVC model have separate HTML files (or the equivalent) for publicly viewable pages (views), business-logic executables (controllers), and data aquisition devices (models).

n-Tier architecture describes applications that pass data between several programs, or layers, during a single logical transaction. JavaScript's XMLHttpRequest (Ajax) and ActionScript's URLRequest are two common routes to n-Tier connection. Both enable Web pages to request bi-directional background communication with a back-end server layer, perhaps a PHP program, that typically returns data in XML format. In turn, the PHP layer may communicate via SQL queries with a MySQL layer, which may communicate with a Linux layer. Each of these layers is one of a potentially n levels of "tier."

Object-Oriented programming prvides a hierarchical organization to programming efforts that can simplify the repurposing of existing, working code to new task requirements. It is not necessarily better than the procedural code it claims to supplant; but it is a powerful organizational tool. ActionScript 3 and PHP 5 are two object-oriented languages used in these sites.

Perl was once my favorite Web server programming language. Although it is a better language than PHP, PHP is my preference, owing to PHP's popularity and its vast libraries of extensions.

PHP is the powerful server-side interpreted programming language used by most of the sites on this page.

XML, eXtended Markup Language, is a definitional structure for transporting conforming data across a wide variety of applications. Arguably XML is more precisely a language than a paradigm; it even calls itself a language. Yet the idea to encapsulate data within universally comprehensible containers is decidedly paradigmatic.

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