PHP Magic: Building a static countdown clock using PHP and GD

Update (2010-04-20): These Gleeks are crazy. Since being released, the clock has been viewed over 200,000 times. Insane.

Mockingbird: wireframing made awesome

Wireframing is awesome!

WordPress Plugin: Plugin Notes

This is the outcome of a couple of hours of Friday night coding after an open call by Chris Coyier over at Digging into WordPress. Here's what Chris asked for:

Digital Design Project: theboar.ca

My independent digital design project (DAC 400) completed as part of my Digital Arts Communication specialization explored the push by magazines into the online and technology spaces. The goal of the project was to explore viable technologies to use as a platform for developing an online presence for The Boar, an arts and literary magazine produced by and for the students in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo. I explored the traditional online website format but looked further by designing a prototype of an up-and-coming Flash-based technology known as the "digital edition." This "new technology" is being adopted industry-wide like wildfire (see Issuu, Scribd, Zinio, etc.). It takes a traditional PDF and converts it into an interactive magazine-like object on a webpage that can be used and manipulated much like a physical magazine. My prototype (although not entirely functional) took a step further and explored the possibilities of creating greater ties between a magazine's website and their digital edition via a synchronization of comments, bookmarking, and other social networking type tools.

Web App prototype: eCard Builder

Development: Imprint Online – Web Publishing System

Development: Imprint Archives

Development: Imprint Online

I modified the core code of the Mambo content management system to meet the unique needs of a newspaper's online counterpart, such as having an issue-based publishing system, among others. This involved modifications to both front- and back-end code+interfaces. Beyond this, I investigated add-ons provide additional functionality such as a commenting system and integrated those into the website. If add-ons were not readily available or were not up-to-standard in terms of quality, I wrote them from scratch. A great example is the PDF Archive.