Ryan Kinal
100 E. St. Clair St.
Warren, PA 16365
716.581.1000
ryan.kinal@gmail.com
Ryan Kinal is a programmer and web developer, specializing in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS,
with experience in PHP, SQL, ASP.NET, and graphic design. But beyond being technologically inclined, he is also artistically motivated, through music, lindy hop, and drawing in various media. Combining these interests and talents, he is a skilled developer with an eye for aesthetic design.
Making Time
Tuesday, February 2nd 4:16 pm
I have things I want to do.
I'm sure all web developers have pet projects, and I'm sure a lot of those pet projects, unfortuately, get pushed aside for paid work. That's what's happened to mine. I have a couple different projects of my very own that I could be coding, or getting designs laid out for (whether that's database designs, graphic designs, object-oriented designs, or interface designs), but I honestly feel guilty doing my own work when there are people who have work for me to do. And it's a shame, because a few of these projects, I've had high hopes for, and a few haven't even gotten out of my head and onto paper (or into Notepad or Google Wave).
So, I think I need to make some time for my projects, and I'd like to put what I need to do here, in this post, for all to see.
- Re-learn Python, and PyGame - I hear there is a new(ish) version of PyGame out, so I should download that, and get back into messing around with it. I have a couple game ideas, and I think I could make them happen.
- Les Vignettes - You don't get to know what this is, sorry. (The below items are some clues, though)
- Storyboard for first character - Yep, need to get writing.
- Database design - There are some odd interactions between elements, and I need to figure out how to represent that in a database, and whether AWS SimpleDB or a traditional relational database is more suited to it
- Figure out the art - Might need to do some sketches
- Eclipse Phase Muse - Actually get my Ego Manager up and running. The database is almost there, and I've had some ideas as to how to improve the database, and get it closer to an Ego Creator
- Iron Flyboy - Get more setting information written, and get it up on a website.
- New SquishyUI using jQuery - See my JavaScript section for more information on Squishy.
That's a lot of stuff I want to do. Not all of it is web development, but a lot of it is. So, I could justify that as furthering my professional career, right? Sort of. It doesn't get me paid (and money is tight right now), but if I get these things online and viewable by the public, they are definitely things I could show potential clients. And I don't have many of those types of things right now, so it would be beneficial.
Game development has been a goal of mine for a while, but I rarely have the original ideas or the drive to actually finish a game project. Mostly because I get either get bored with the back-end development, or I realize that the game I came up with just wouldn't be fun (Les Vignettes, and the reasons I want to relearn Python, though, would definitely be fun).
It's just a matter of making time. It's hard enough to make good code, but making time itself is really tough. And there's not a lot of documentation.
On Email Addresses
While writing this, I was also thinking about login issues. Particularly that of the '.' (which will now be referred to as a period) character in email addresses. GMail allows you to put as many periods in any given email address as you want - 'ryan.kinal@gmail.com' is equivalent to 'ryankinal@gmail.com' which is equivalent to r.ya....n.k.in.al@gmail.com'. When using email as the primary login credential, this presents a problem. Many different accounts can be set up with the same email address. While this is useful for testing, it could be a problem if, for instance, you're giving away one free item to each account.
Interestingly, Wizards.com tries to fix this by simply stripping out any periods in the beginning part of an email address, and storing that. While this works in theory, Wizards.com fails to strip the periods when logging in. So, if you register with 'my.name.is.bob@example.org', it stores 'mynameisbob@example.org'. But if you log in with 'my.name.is.bob@example.org', it compares that particular string to 'mynameisbob@example.org' and fails to come up with an account.
Of course, this is easily fixed by stripping the periods from the login before comparing, and I think that is a great way to go. It might be time to file a bug report with Wizards.com
- Roy says:
- Heh, Squishy UI using jQuery would be a good direction to go. jQuery rocks. Even a PHP luddite like me can dig it.